Iftf 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT   OXFORD 

/          _ 

This  book  is  supplied  by  MESSRS.  SMITH, 
ELDER  &  Co.  to  Booksellers  on  terms  which  will 
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MR.  GLADSTONE  AT   OXFORD 
1890 


THE  RT.  HON.  \V.  E.  GLADSTONE 


Frontispiece 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT 
OXFORD 

1890 


BY 

C.  R.  L.  F. 


WITH   ILLUSTRATIONS 


LONDON 

SMITH,  ELDER,  &  CO.,  15  WATERLOO  PLACE 
1908 

[All  rights  reserved] 


Printed  by  BALLANTYNE,  HANSON  <&•  Co. 
At  the  Ballantync  Press,  Edinburgh 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE   RIGHT  HON.  W.  E.  GLADSTONE    .        Frontispiece 

THE    RIGHT    HON.    W.    E.    GLADSTONE 

AND  MRS.  GLADSTONE  .        .        .        .       To  face  p.  24 

VIEW  OF  ROOMS  AT  ALL  SOULS 
COLLEGE,  OXFORD,  OCCUPIED  BY 
MR.  GLADSTONE  62 


The  portraits  are  from  photographs  taken  at  Oxford,  during 
the  week  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  visit,  by  Miss  Acland,  for 
whose  kindness  the  author  is  most  grateful. 


2066373    . 


MR.   GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD 

THE  following  letters  were  written  to  a 
correspondent  who  was  a  devoted  admirer 
of  Mr.  Gladstone  from  his  earliest  years. 
I,  the  writer  (described  in  the  letters  as  F.), 
had  on  the  occasion  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  visit 
ceased  to  be  a  Fellow  of  All  Souls  College 
for  a  little  over  a  year,  but,  though  recently 
married,  I  obtained  "  leave  from  home "  to 
spend  in  the  College,  whose  hospitality  is 
ever  open  to  its  "  quondams,"  the  week 
from  January  30 — February  7,  1890,  with 
a  view  to  writing  down,  for  the  benefit  of 
the  correspondent  above  mentioned,  anything 
that  I  could  collect  of  interest,  and  especially 
any  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  famous  conversation. 
Unfortunately  only  two  of  the  letters  are 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

really  full,  and  there  is  a  complete  lacuna 
from  February  3  to  February  8.  The 
letters  concerning  these  days  must  have 
been  lost  or  lent  to  friends,  and  cannot 
now  be  recovered.  It  has  been  thought 
desirable  that  some  record  of  the  memorable 
visit — Mr.  Gladstone's  last  visit  but  one  to 
the  Oxford  he  so  dearly  loved — should  be 
published.  For  he  came  but  once  more,  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Michaelmas  Term,  1 892, 
to  deliver  the  first  Romanes  Lecture,  when 
he  was  Prime  Minister  for  the  fourth  time. 
On  that  occasion  he  was  the  guest  of  Dean 
Paget  at  Christ  Church. 

Probably  any  Fellow  of  the  College,  of 
which  I  was  certainly  the  least  distinguished 
member,  could  have  given  a  better  account 
of  all  that  we  heard  and  felt ;  and  my  only 
excuse  for  publishing  these  letters  is  that,  so 
far  as  is  known,  no  other  record  of  his  con- 
versations in  the  College  now  exists.  The 
letters  as  they  stand  were,  with  one  exception, 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

written  late  at  night,  often  occupying  from 
three  to  four  hours  after  Mr.  Gladstone  had 
gone  to  bed,  which  he  usually  did  at  about 
half-past  ten  ;  and  as  they  were  then  intended 
for  no  eyes  but  those  of  the  correspondent 
to  whom  I  had  been  in  the  habit  all  my  life 
of  writing  almost  daily,  they  are  necessarily 
scrappy  and  fragmentary.  But  it  has  been 
thought  better  to  give  them  as  they  were 
written,  and  no  attempt  has  been  made  to 
dress  them  up  or  to  rectify  the  errors  of 
diction,  except  by  the  expansion  of  symbols 
and  abbreviations  and  by  punctuation — save, 
indeed,  in  the  case  of  the  letter  dated 
February  8,  which,  for  reasons  unconnected 
with  Mr.  Gladstone's  visit,  had  to  be  recast. 
When  looked  at  after  seventeen  years  much 
of  them  appears  very  trivial,  and  they 
certainly  give  a  very  imperfect  account  of 
the  extraordinary  volume  and  vivacity  of 
Mr.  Gladstone's  talk.  Since  his  death 
several  friends  have  asked  me  to  publish 

3 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

them,  but  it  was  not  till  January  of  last 
year  that  I  took  the  preliminary  step  of 
asking  Mr.  John  Morley's  advice  on  the 
subject.  Mr.  Morley  is,  as  Mr.  Gladstone 
was,  an  Honorary  Fellow  of  the  College, 
and  he  gave  me  every  possible  encourage- 
ment, and  most  kindly  allowed  me  to  use 
his  name  as  approving  of  the  scheme ; 
"  for,"  he  said,  "  I  am  convinced  that  the 
more  that  is  known  about  Mr.  Gladstone 
the  greater  he  will  appear."  He  recom- 
mended me  to  ask  a  further  sanction  from 
Mr.  Henry  Gladstone,  who,  on  behalf  of  his 
family,  gave  it  in  the  most  gracious  manner 
possible ;  and  the  cup  of  kindness  was  filled 
up  by  the  Warden  of  All  Souls,  who  pro- 
mised me  the  assistance  that  was  in  his 
power,  and  his  only,  to  give. 

The  relations  existing  between  all  Fellows, 

past  and  present,  of  All  Souls  College,  which 

yearly   becomes,  according  to  the  beautiful 

prayer   appointed    for  our  Founder's    Day, 

4 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,   1890 

"  the  fruitful  mother  of  more  happy  chil- 
dren," have  always  been  peculiarly  intimate 
and  brotherly — more  so,  I  believe,  than 
similar  relations  in  any  society  with  such  a 
standing  and  such  a  history  ;  and  for  this 
reason  I  have  thought  it  better  to  designate 
each  of  the  actual  members  of  the  College 
who  took  part  in  the  conversations  which 
I  have  recorded  merely  by  initials.  Those 
of  us  who  were  present  will  probably  recog- 
nise to  whom  these  initials  refer,  and  it  does 
not  concern  any  one  else  to  know.  My 
readers,  outside  our  own  circle,  will  only 
care  to  know  about  Mr.  Gladstone,  whose 
words  are  here  as  literally  recorded  as  my 
memory  after  the  lapse  of  a  few  hours  could 
record  them. 

I  must  be  allowed,  however,  one  or  two 
words  of  preface  concerning  my  own  im- 
pressions of  the  man,  which  I  am  allowed 
to  supplement  by  some  received  from  other 
Fellows.  I  was  not  at  all  prepared  for  the 

5 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

spell  he  cast  upon  me,  for,  being  an  intole- 
rant Tory  and  a  strong  Erastian,  I  regarded 
both  his  theological  opinions  and  everything 
he  had  done  in  politics  since  1868  with  the 
greatest  abhorrence.  But  I  immediately  fell, 
as  I  believe  every  one  did,  under  the  spell — 
I  can  only  call  it  a  spell — of  his  rich,  low, 
ringing  voice  and  of  the  marvellous  vivacity 
and  flow  of  his  conversation.  Two  remark- 
able instances  of  this  "  spell "  have  been 
communicated  to  me  by  Fellows  of  the  Col- 
lege who  were  present  at  an  earlier  visit  of 
Mr.  Gladstone,  which  took  place  in  No- 
vember 1888,  in  circumstances  described  as 
follows  by  W.  R.  A.  :— 

"  When  Dr.  Talbot  was  Warden  of  Keble 
Mr.  Gladstone  used  from  time  to  time  to 
pay  visits  to  him  and  Mrs.  Talbot,  and  on 
these  occasions  he  was  accustomed  very  cour- 
teously to  call  upon  me,  as  Head  of  the 
College  of  which  he  was  an  Honorary  Fel- 
low. Not  being  informed  beforehand  of 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

these  visits,  I  had  always  failed  to  meet  him, 
and  on  one  occasion,  when  I  heard  from  the 
Talbots  that  he  was  coming  to  them,  I  asked 
them  to  arrange  that  Mr.  Gladstone  should 
come  at  an  hour  in  the  afternoon  when  1 
could  take  him  into  the  coffee-room  and 
introduce  some  of  the  Fellows  to  him.  Mr. 
Gladstone  very  kindly  fell  in  with  the  pro- 
posal, and  named  an  hour  for  his  visit.  I 
gave  notice  to  the  Fellows,  and  a  party  of 
them  assembled  in  the  coffee-room  to  give 
him  tea.  The  visit  took  place  in  November 
1888,  and  led,  I  think,  to  the  longer  sojourn 
in  1890,  for  Mr.  Gladstone  was  evidently 
pleased  with  the  cordiality  of  his  welcome. 
This  is  indicated  by  the  letter  in  which  he 
proposed  to  come  up  in  1890.  The  letter 
runs  as  follows  : — 

" '  HAWARDEN  CASTLE,  nr.  CHESTER, 
"'  Christmas  D.  89. 

"  *  DEAR    MR.   WARDEN, — When  I   was 
last  at  Oxford,  and  was  very  kindly  received 
7 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

at  All  Souls,  all  other  kindness  was  crowned 
by  an  invitation,  or  suggestion,  that  I  should 
pay  a  visit  to  the  College  in  the  capacity  of 
Honorary  Fellow. 

"  *  This  means,  I  imagine,  for  the  time, 
rooms,  commons,  Hall  and  Chapel ;  and 
such  a  vision  of  renovated  youth  has  a  great 
charm  for  me. 

" '  It  would  be  in  my  power  to  de- 
vote a  week  to  this  purpose  on  or  about 
January  30 — and  I  have  put  on  a  front  of 
sevenfold  brass  to  ask  whether  I  really 
may  ? 

"  '  If  I  may,  I  should  wish  only  to  make 
one  condition — that  of  disturbing  nobody 
and  nothing  ;  and  to  know  whether,  in  order 
to  insure  giving  no  trouble,  I  might  bring  a 
servant  who,  I  can  answer  for  it,  would  give 
no  sort  of  offence. 

" c  I  rely  on  your  kindness  to  let  me 
know  whether  time  or  any  other  impedi- 
ment makes  it  desirable  to  adjourn  this  pro- 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,   1890 

posal. — Believe  me,  dear  Mr.  Warden,  faith- 
fully yours,  W.  E.  GLADSTONE. 

"  '  The  Warden  of  All  Souls.' " 

Thus  C.  G.  L.  writes :  "  Mr.  Gladstone 
arrived  in  the  afternoon  and  was  brought  by 
the  Warden  into  the  coffee-room  to  be  intro- 
duced to  the  Fellows.  M.  B.  had  expressed 
in  vigorous  terms  his  conviction  that  he 
could  not  conscientiously  meet  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, but  had  been  persuaded  to  join  in  the 
reception.  Directly  Mr.  Gladstone  heard 
his  name  he  said,  (  Ah,  Professor,  it  is  one 
of  the  charms  of  Oxford  that  one  meets  at 
every  moment  some  one  with  whose  name 
in  some  branch  of  learning  one  has  long  been 
familiar.'  M.  B.  beamed  with  obvious  plea- 
sure, and  at  once  surrendered  to  the  spell. 
Soon  after  I  saw  him  trotting  about  after 
Mr.  Gladstone  with  the  sugar  and  cream- 
jug.  The  other  person  whom  Mr.  Glad- 
stone singled  out  for  attention  was  the  great 
9 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

academic  champion  of  the  Liberal  Unionist 
cause.'* 

T.  R.  also  notices  this.  "  Conscious  of 
certain  passages  at  arms  that  other  Pro- 
fessor, when  he  entered  the  room  and  saw 
who  was  there,  was  going  to  sit  down  at 
a  distance ;  but  Mr.  Gladstone  seized  him 
and  began,  *  Oxford  is  too  interesting  !  I 
did  not  expect  to  have  the  opportunity  of 
meeting  you,'  and  with  this  he  led  his 
opponent  to  a  sofa  and  began  to  take  a 
lesson  in  the  Law  of  the  Constitution." 

Yet  I  think  that  two  things  struck  me 
even  more  than  the  spell  which  he  cast — 
namely,  Mr.  Gladstone's  beautiful  sim- 
plicity and  his  perfect  courtesy.  He  was 
much  the  "  finest  gentleman "  I  ever  met ; 
and  the  result  was  that  every  one,  down 
to  the  humblest  College  servant,  felt  the 
better  for  being  in  his  presence.  All  sorts 

of  tales  were  going  round   Oxford  at  the 
10 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

time  and  for  months  afterwards  of  the 
strange  things  he  had  said  and  done ; 
some  very  ungenerous  things  were  said, 
among  others  that  he  had  affected  a  High 
Toryism  in  order  to  please  people  here. 
Apart  from  the  fact  that  he  was  wholly 
incapable  of  affectation,  I  am  quite  sure 
that  that  would  be  the  wrong  way  to  put 
it.  It  is  true  that  the  Oxford,  and  even 
at  times  the  world  in  which  his  thoughts 
seemed  to  be  moving,  were  not  the  Oxford 
or  the  world  of  that  day ;  he  often  genuinely 
and  honestly  said  that  he  looked  back  with 
regret  to  "  unreformed  "  Oxford. 

As  C.  W.  O.  says:  "He  was  full  of 
anecdotes  and  illustrations  of  the  most 
interesting  kind,  but  I  noted  that  they  all 
bore  on  the  earlier  half  of  his  political 
career.  He  told  us  much  about  such 
people  as  Lord  Melbourne,  Lord  Aber- 
deen, and  Lord  Palmerston,  but  practically 
ii 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

nothing  of  what  happened  after  1866;  he 
never  in  my  hearing  mentioned  Disraeli 
...  of  his  own  Oxford  life  he  was  ever 
ready  to  speak." 

But  I  think  any  one  who  has  studied 
Mr.  Morley's  splendid  biography  will  see 
this  temper  of  its  hero  constantly  reflected 
in  its  pages ;  while,  as  for  affectation,  Mr. 
Gladstone  and  affectation  within  a  day's 
march  of  each  other  are  inconceivable. 
His  conservatism  —  that  seems  to  be  the 
best  word  for  it — was  by  no  means  merely 
academic.  I  never  saw  any  sign,  other 
than  his  universal  courtesy,  that  he  was 
trying  to  conciliate,  by  a  display  of  this 
mental  attitude,  his  political  opponents ; 
but  when  he  came  here  it  was  as  if  he 
had  stepped  backwards  over  a  gulf.  "He 
became  once  more,"  says  T.  R.,  "  the 
Junior  Burgess  for  the  University  whom 
Dr.  Bullock  Marsham  had  advised  to  guide 

12 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

himself  by  the  example  of  Sir  Robert 
Inglis.  I  fancy  that  there  were  indeed 
many  Liberal  principles  which  he  had 
adopted  without  assimilating."  But  in 
academic  matters  this  attitude  was  very 
clearly  marked.  His  own  political  sup- 
porters, good  academic  Liberals,  were  ex- 
pected to  sympathise  with  his  views  about 
the  University  which  dated  from  1847  at 
the  very  latest.  It  was  the  Chairman  of 
the  "  Liberal  Three  Hundred  "  to  whom 
he  said,  "I  am  sure,  Sir  William,  your 
memory  will  bear  me  out  in  saying  that  a 
valuable  element  was  lost  to  our  social 
life  with  the  disappearance  of  our  noble- 
men and  gentlemen  -  commoners."  1  He 
said  in  my  hearing  much  the  same  thing 

1  "  I  am  sure  that  you  will  agree  with  me  that 
not  merely  Christ  Church,  but  the  University 
generally,  and,  I  might  almost  add,  our  social  life 
has  suffered  with  the  disappearance,"  &c.  [Cor- 
rection by  W.  R.  A.] 

13 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

to  A.  H.  H.,  who  tells  me  that,  when  he 
afterwards  mentioned  the  fact  to  the  late 
Lord  Salisbury,  that  statesman  drily  re- 
marked :  "  When  these  privileged  persons 
existed  Mr.  Gladstone  was  always  urging 
their  abolition." 

"  He  never  concealed,"  says  T.  R.,  "  his 
belief  that  the  Oxford  of  1890  was  in 
certain  respects  inferior  to  the  Oxford  of 
1830.  He  was  shocked,  not  without 
reason,  at  the  laxity  which  allows  young 
men  to  perambulate  the  streets  in 
*  shorts.' " 

And  C.  G.  L.  adds :  "  I  remember 
vividly  his  answer  to  a  question  as  to  the 
chief  differences  which  he  noticed  between 
undergraduates  of  this  and  of  his  own 
time :  '  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that 
the  most  obvious  difference  is  in  the  dress 
which  they  see  fit  to  wear  in  the  High 
14 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

Street.  I  was  almost  shocked  with  the 
spectacle  of  men  in  boating  costume,  in- 
deed I  may  say  in  very  scanty  costume, 
in  the  High  Street.  Such  a  thing  would 
have  been  impossible  in  my  time.  We 
were  much  more  concerned  about  our  dress. 
I  remember  contemporaries — young  men  at 
Christ  Church — who,  when  they  were  not 
hunting,  made  a  point  of  promenading  the 
High  Street  in  the  most  careful  attire. 
And  some  of  them  kept  a  supply  of 
breeches  which  they  only  wore  for  that 
purpose,  and  in  which  they  never  sat  down 
lest  any  creases  should  appear.  I  confess  I 
think  the  undergraduates  now  seem  to 
have  passed  to  the  other  extreme.' "... 
So,  too,  C.  W.  O.  says :  "  When  asked, 
after  his  lecture  at  the  Union,  how  an 
undergraduate  audience  of  1890  differed 
from  one  of  his  own  youth,  he  replied 
that  the  main  thing  which  he  observed  was 
that  dress  had  become  so  careless.  In  his 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

youth,  he  said,  there  would  have  been 
dozens  of  men  present,  'who,  with  their 
two  watch  chains,  their  elaborate  waist- 
coats, and  their  fashionable  suits,  could 
not  have  been  dressed  for  ^30 ' ;  but  in 
1890  he  did  not  notice  a  man  who  could 
not  have  been  dressed  for  ;£io,  and  the 
general  effect  was  rather  slovenly." 

The  proposal  to  dispense  with  viva  voce 
in  Responsions  drew  forth  a  sorrowful  pro- 
test. Everything,  he  complained,  was  being 
made  too  easy.  Both  Greek  and  mathe- 
matics, he  understood,  were  in  danger  be- 
cause they  involved  hard  work.  Even  so 
harmless  an  institution  as  Liddell  and  Scott's 
Lexicon  did  not  escape  censure.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone had  a  word  to  say  for  Schrevelius : 
"  You  younger  men  have  so  many  helps  and 
appliances !  When  there  was  only  Schre- 
velius I  had  to  make  my  own  Homeric 

Lexicon,  and  the  labour  did  me  good." 
16 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

T.  R.  continues :  "  We  went  for  a  little 
walk  together,  he  and  I,  and  he  gave  me  in 
a  meditative  kind  of  way  the  points  of  his 
political  relations  with  the  University.  What 
struck  me  was  that  he  spoke  not  as  a  Liberal, 
but  as  an  Oxford  man  who  had  gone  into 
the  Liberal  party  because  the  Tory  party 
was  under — influences;  he  lingered  on  the 
word  ;  no  doubt  Protectionism  and  Disraeli 
were  in  his  mind.  He  still  valued  Oxford 
as  a  power  counteracting  dangerous  tendencies 
in  politics — especially  the  tendency  to  ignore 
the  fatal  effect  which  the  absence  of  religious 
belief  must  have  on  society  and  Government. 
Politics  were  in  our  general  conversations 
neither  avoided  nor  led  up  to ;  he  was  essen- 
tially TTO\ITIKOV  tyov,  and  if  he  was  inclined 
to  talk  even  of  the  most  modern  politics  he 
would  do  so.  But  he  was  not  '  the  greatest 
member  of  Parliament  that  ever  lived '  with- 
out being  well  aware  of  how  to  closure  a 

discussion    with    perfect    courtesy ;    once   I 
17  B 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

heard  him  administer  a  sharp  and  well- 
deserved  rap ;  several  times  I  noticed  how 
quickly  he  skated  over  thin  ice,  and  was 
back  on  thick  again." 

T.  R.'s  general  estimate  of  the  great 
personality  of  Mr.  Gladstone  runs  as  follows: 
"  Nobody  could  be  better  company  in  a  house 
than  Mr.  Gladstone  was.  He  entered  at  once 
into  all  the  ways  of  the  place.  His  hours  of 
work  were  carefully  observed  :  he  did  not 
wait  for  the  clock  to  strike,  but  rose  from 
his  chair  two  minutes  before  the  time.  When 
I  saw  him  at  work  what  impressed  me  was 
the  steadiness  of  his  pace.  Each  minute  he 
laid  so  much  of  his  task  behind  him  like  a 
labourer  laying  an  even  swathe.  His  great 
power  of  work  was  in  some  ways  a  disad- 
vantage to  him.  From  morning  till  night 
he  was  either  taking  something  into  his  mind 
or  pouring  it  out  again  in  words  ;  there  were 
none  of  those  unoccupied  times  in  which 

things  settle  down  and  take  a  clear  outline. 
18 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

And  this  may  partially  account  for  his  habit 
of  lapsing  out  of  one  opinion  into  another 
without  being  conscious  of  the  change.  He 
went  from  breakfast  to  his  desk,  and  seldom 
read  the  newspaper.  One  morning  during 
his  stay  all  the  papers  had  reports  of  the 
case  in  which  Mr.  Parnell  recovered  large 
damages  from  the  proprietors  of  the  Times ; 
Mr.  Gladstone  heard  of  the  event  at  7.30  P.M. 
from  one  of  his  neighbours  at  dinner. 

"  The  charm  of  his  talk  cannot  be  rendered 
in  description — the  softness  of  the  lower  tones 
of  the  voice,  the  easy  constant  movement  as 
he  turned  from  one  to  the  other :  the  clenched 
fist,  the  open  palm,  and  the  challenging  fore- 
finger, which  the  House  of  Commons  knew 
so  well.  Sometimes  he  seemed  to  drop  out 
of  the  conversation,  his  eye  looked  veiled 
and  tired ;  but  at  the  first  sound  of  a  name 
that  appealed  to  him  the  veil  seemed  to  lift, 
and  he  was  watching  the  moment  to  speak. 
He  spoke  much  but  not  continuously,  for 
'9 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,   1890 

he  always  felt  that  Oxford  was  a  place  where 
he  ought  to  be  learning  from  the  men  who 
knew.  .  .  .  One  admirable  characteristic  was 
his  unwillingness  to  speak  ill  of  any  indi- 
vidual ;  he  spoke  generously  of  opponents ; 
supporters  who  had  turned  against  him  called 
up  a  peculiar  expression  on  his  face,  but  he 
anxiously  gave  them  their  due.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  in  1890  he  was  constantly 
chafed  by  having  to  sit  on  the  same  bench 
with  the  Liberal  Unionist  leaders.  .  .  .  He 
was  not  exactly  a  humourist,  but  he  had  a 
genuine  sense  of  humour,  displayed  rather 
in  manner  than  in  forms  of  speech.  One 
morning  when  we  were  at  breakfast  he  came 
in  with  a  brown  loaf,  supported  on  a  sheet 
of  paper  in  his  hand.  He  came  to  the  end 
of  the  table  just  as  he  might  have  come  to 
the  table  of  the  House,  and  began  :  *  This 
loaf  is  presented  by  a  baker  who  is  pleased 
to  describe  himself  as  an  admirer  of  mine.' 

He  proceeded  to  give  us  a  full  account  of 
20 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

the  merits  of  the  loaf."  We  finished  the 
loaf:  if  I  remember  right  it  was  a  trifle 
heavy.  "Then,  sitting  down  and  beginning 
his  meal,  he  went  on :  *  The  operations  of 
my  admirers  reduce  themselves  on  the  aver- 
age and  in  the  long  run  to  a  kind  of  balance  : 
some  of  them  present  me  with  things  which 
they  suppose  I  want,  and  the  others  steal 
what  I  have  ; '  he  described  the  precautions 
which  had  to  be  taken  at  Hawarden  to  pre- 
vent enthusiastic  tourists  from  carrying  off 
his  axes  and  other  portable  property." 

LETTERS 

Wednesday,  January  29,  '90. — Mr.  Glad- 
stone will  dine  in  College  on  Friday,  Satur- 
day, Sunday,  and  as  many  other  days  as  he 
is  not  invited  out.  He  is  to  breakfast  in  his 
own  room.  Whether  he  will  lunch  in  the 
Buttery,  or  not,  I  don't  know.  T.  R. — the 
Dean,  whose  duty  it  is  to  select  the  Fellows 

21 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

who  are  to  read — swears  he  will  make  him 
read  the  lessons  in  Chapel. 


* 
* 


Mr.  Gladstone  did  not  breakfast  in  his 
own  room,  but  each  day,  except  once  when 
I  think  he  was  invited  elsewhere,  came  to 
the  Common  College  breakfast  in  the  Com- 
mon Room.  This  I  always  regarded  as  the 
pleasantest  meal  of  the  day,  and  he  was 
always  in  extraordinarily  good  form  at  it. 
He  used  to  sit  on  the  left-hand  side  of  the 
fireplace,  and  I  remember  his  great  admira- 
tion of  the  shape  of  the  room.  At  dinner, 
although  his  talk  was  more  sustained,  it 
seemed  to  cost  him  a  greater  effort,  and 
after  nine  o'clock  he  often  yawned.  It  was 
certainly  at  the  breakfast  table  that  we 
juniors  got  the  most  out  of  him. 

W.  R.  A.  thus  describes  an  invitation 
which  Mr.  Gladstone  received  to  a  breakfast 

party   at    Magdalen.     "  During   Mr.    Glad- 
22 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

stone's  visit,  Sir  Henry  Acland  invited  Mrs. 
Gladstone  to  come  and  stay  with  him  and  wit- 
ness Mr.  Gladstone's  collegiate  experiences. 
We  all  thought  that  Mr.  G.  somewhat  resented 
this  intrusion  of  the  domestic  into  the  aca- 
demic life,  but,  at  any  rate,  his  movements 
were  unaffected  by  the  presence  of  Mrs. 
Gladstone.  She  stayed  with  Sir  Henry  for 
two  nights,  was  present  when  Mr.  Gladstone 
delivered  his  address  at  the  Union,  and 
asked  me  whether  there  would  be  any  objec- 
tion to  her  coming  on  the  following  morning 
to  our  chapel  service,  whereat  Mr.  Gladstone 
was  a  regular  attendant.  I  begged  Sir  Henry, 
himself  a  *  quondam,'  to  bring  her  to  chapel, 
and  it  was  arranged  that  they  should  break- 
fast afterwards  at  my  house.  I  then  waylaid 
Mr.  Gladstone  as  he  was  walking  out  to 
dinner,  and  asked  him  if  he  would  join  our 
breakfast  party.  Nothing,  he  said,  would 
have  given  him  greater  pleasure  than  to 
breakfast  with  the  Warden,  *  but  it  so  hap- 
23 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

pens  that  I  am  engaged  to  breakfast  with  the 
President  of  Magdalen,  to  meet  the  President 
of  the  University  Boat  Club,  and  the  Captain 
of  the  University  eleven.' ' 

C.  W.  O.  adds  to  this:  "It  was  while  I 
was  showing  Mr.  Gladstone  round  the 
Library,  on  the  third  day  of  his  stay,  that 
we  were  surprised  to  see  Mrs.  Gladstone 
enter.  She  told  him  that  she  had  come  to 
see  that  he  did  not  over-exert  himself,  as  she 
feared  that  he  was  seeing  too  much  company. 
He  replied,  in  the  most  affectionate  but 
humorous  tones,  that  many  people  had  been 
telling  him  that  there  were  too  many  ladies 
in  Oxford,  since  the  ladies'  colleges  had  been 
set  up,  and  that,  if  she  carried  him  back  to 
London  at  once,  he  was  sure  that  these 
people  would  consider  themselves  quite  jus- 
tified of  their  opinion  ;  for  the  rest,  he  said, 
he  was  '  enjoying  himself  mightily,  and  did 
not  think  that  such  a  pleasurable  visit  could 
be  doing  him  any  harm,' ' 
24 


THE  RT.   HON.  W.  E.  GLADSTONE  AND  MRS.  GLADSTONE 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,    1890 

Concerning  the  breakfast  party  at  Mag- 
dalen interesting  reminiscences  have  been 
communicated  to  me  by  the  President  and 
three  of  the  Fellows  of  Magdalen.  C.  C.  J. 
W.,  after  mentioning  the  persons  present, 
writes  :  "  The  date  was  February  6,  '90  :  we 
did  not  break  up  till  11.30.  Mr.  Gladstone 
said  that  he  recollected  the  younger  Kean 
acting  Henry  V.  in  1859,  and  that  the 
lines — 

I  thought  upon  each  pair  of  English  legs 
Did  march  three  Frenchmen — 

were  always  received  with  much  applause : 
'  On  the  night,  however,  on  which  the  news 
of  Magenta  (I  think)  arrived  they  were 
received  in  silence.'  Mr.  Gladstone  gave 
this  as  an  instance  of  the  spontaneous  good 
feeling  of  the  audience,  which  did  not  let 
them  boast  over  the  French,  when  the  French 
had  been  fighting  gallantly  and  they  them- 
selves were  at  home  at  ease.  After  breakfast 
25 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

we  adjourned  to  the  President's  study.  The 
talk  turned  at  first  upon  the  Homeric  gods, 
was  chiefly  addressed  to  D.  G.  H.,  and,  as 
was  natural  in  view  of  D.  G.  H.'s  recent 
production  of  the  '  Devia  Cypria,'  Aphrodite 
was  mentioned  and  her  oriental  character 
discussed.  .  .  .  Some  of  it  was  also  on  Greek 
topics  of  a  more  modern  date ;  Mr.  Glad- 
stone said  that  his  popularity  in  Greece  was 
largely  due  to  his  name  being  declinable : 
T\aS(TTu>vy  TXaSa-rwvo?,  &c.  I  think  this  was 
to  cap  a  story  which  J.  T.  told  of  a  Greek 
who  knew  only  two  English  words,  London 
and  Gladstone.  Mr.  G.  also  spoke  of  the 
Sultan  and  the  Turks.  He  did  not  approve 
of  the  Greek  claim  to  Thessaly.  Of  the 
genuine  Turks  he  spoke  with  respect,  but 
*  the  Sultan,'  said  he,  '  is  false  as  hell.'  He 
said  that  the  Sultan  had  once  sent  over  an 
old  Turkish  Bey  to  treat  confidentially  with 
his,  Mr.  Gladstone's,  Government ;  they  had 

liked    him   greatly   and   got   on   with    him 
26 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

excellently  ;  he  was  an  honest  man  ;  but  the 
Sultan  sent  to  watch  him  another  envoy, 
*  who,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  was  not  a  true 
man :  it  was  doubtless  represented  to  the 
Sultan  by  this  person  that  the  Bey  got  on 
too  well  with  the  English  ministers,  for  he 
went  back  to  Turkey  and  was  never  heard 
of  again.'  When  at  length  Mr.  Gladstone 
got  up  to  go,  the  President  presented  to  him 
more  particularly  those  members  of  the  com- 
pany to  whom  he  had  not  talked  ;  to  most 
of  these  he  had  something  to  say ;  to  J.  S. 
he  spoke  of  the  big  sums  which  he  remem- 
bered being  earned  by  operatic  singers,  par- 
ticularly by  Patti.  He  had  known  my 
father,  who  was  a  friend  of  Sir  Stephen 
Glynne,  and  had  stayed  at  Hawarden ;  to 
me  he  naturally  recalled  this." 

A.  D.  G.  adds  :  "  After  eighteen  years  I 
have  forgotten  exactly  who  was  present,  but 
I  remember  that  C.  M.  was  introduced  to 

Mr.  Gladstone  rather  embarrassingly  as  '  Our 
27 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

philologist.'  Our  guest  was  very  cheerful, 
thoroughly  alert  and  vigorous — making  little 
jokes  at  breakfast  about  having  left  Mrs. 
Gladstone  behind  because  there  were  too 
many  ladies  in  Oxford  already,  and  full  of 
conversation  on  a  variety  of  subjects.  He 
said  something  to  everybody,  and  it  was 
always  meant  to  be  something  specially  ap- 
propriate. Nothing  came  amiss  to  him,  and 
even  on  rowing  he  gave  the  President  of 
the  O.U.B.C.  several  quite  new  facts  about 
the  history  of  that  sport.  Of  course  nobody 
dared  to  draw  him  on  politics.  But  he 
happened  to  be  talking  about  Jews  and 
mentioned  the  fact  that  there  were  none  or 
very  few  in  Ireland ;  somebody  was  rash 
enough  to  suggest  that  recent  events  were 
not  very  encouraging  to  capitalists  in  that 
country ;  for  a  moment  the  speaker  was 
conscious  of  being  transfixed  by  a  terrible 
eye;  it  was  only  for  a  moment,  but  one 

had  the  sense  of  potential  annihilation.    The 
28 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

little  that  Mr.  Gladstone  did  say  about 
current  politics  was  rather  surprising.  He 
spoke  with  strong  condemnation  of  schemes 
for  disestablishment  (of  the  Welsh  Church, 
I  think),  and  used  the  phrase,  '  regrettable 
cupidity,'  of  the  Russian  ambition  to  possess 
Constantinople.  This  seemed  hardly  in 
character :  I  don't  remember  that  he  was 
speaking  to  Conservatives,  and  even  if  he 
had  been,  he  was  not  one  to  make  con- 
cessions to  his  audience ;  but  I  believe  that 
he  was  susceptible  to  the  genius  loci,  that 
Oxford  made  him  a  Tory  again  because  he 
had  been  a  Tory  there  once.  We  sat  talking, 
or  being  talked  to,  in  the  President's  study 
till  nearly  noon.  I  say  '  being  talked  to '  be- 
cause really,  as  was  natural,  nobody  said  very 
much  except  the  great  man.  Yet  this  was 
the  surprising  thing,  that  the  impression  left 
was  not  of  a  monologue  at  all ;  rather  we 
felt  that  we  had  had  a  conversation  led  and 

dominated  by  a  master  of  the  art  of  dialogue. 
29 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

One  began  to  realise  how  much  '  personal 
magnetism '  and  social  skill  had  to  do  with 
the  holding  together  of  a  miscellaneous 
political  party  in  Parliament." 

T.  H.  W.  adds :  "  Some  of  the  party  who 
had  met  Mr.  Gladstone  before,  said  that  they 
had  never  known  him  so  brilliant.  He  cer- 
tainly appeared  to  be  in  the  best  of  health 
and  spirits.  A  lady  who  was  present,  having 
begun  the  conversation  by  saying  that  she 
heard  that  Mrs.  Gladstone  was  coming  to 
Oxford,  the  great  man  replied,  'Yes,  and 
I  must  tell  you  that  it  is  entirely  without 
my  countenance.  .  .  .'  He  then  spoke  of 
the  College  Chapel,  which  he  had  been  at- 
tending frequently,  and  the  talk  came  to 
turn  on  the  point  whether  the  choir  was 
heard  to  better  advantage  when  the  Chapel 
was  full  or  empty.  Sir  J.  S.  was  appealed 
to.  He  said  that  Magdalen  Chapel  might 
be  more  resonant  when  comparatively  empty, 

but  that  if  a  building  were  at  all  large,  it 
30 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

was  better  that  it  should  be  full.  Some  one 
then  asked  Mr.  Gladstone,  *  Which  is  better 
for  speaking  in,  a  full  room  or  an  empty 
room  ?  *  I  cut  in'  and  said,  *  You  mustn't 
ask  Mr.  Gladstone  that,  he  has  had  no  ex- 
perience of  an  empty  room.*  This  seemed 
to  please  him ;  with  a  smile  all  over  his  face, 
and  in  quite  an  Odyssean  manner,  he  replied, 
' 1  have  had  all  experiences.'  I  then  said, 
'  We  might  perhaps  go  further  and  ask 
whether  a  little  opposition  is  not  a  good 
thing  for  a  speaker.'  Mr.  G. :  *  Certainly, 
the  worst  thing  in  the  world  is  a  dead 
audience.  City  gatherings  are  bad,  because 
as  a  rule  there  are  a  good  many  ladies 
present  and  they  are  not  allowed  by  etiquette 
to  demonstrate  or  express  their  feelings,  con- 
sequently they  are  so  much  dead  weight.' 
An  audience  of  actors,  he  said,  was  the  best 
he  had  ever  had ;  they  appreciated  points 
with  so  much  rapidity.  He  then  spoke  of 
Bishop  Christopher  Wordsworth  and  his  book 
31 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

on  Greece ;  *  it  was  a  notable  book ;  he  dis- 
covered the  site  of  Dodona  and  gave  his 
reasons  for  the  identification ;  years  after- 
wards the  Germans  made  the  same  discovery. 
His  smaller  book  on  Athens  is  the  only  book 
which  handles  topography  with  grace.'  He 
then  spoke  of  public  schools  :  *  Harrow  is 
wonderful  as  having  been  a  local  grammar 
school  which  has  blossomed  into  the  great 
institution  it  now  is  ;  there  are  other  examples 
of  the  same  kind,  such  as  Uppingham.' 
A.  D.  G.  said,  '  Yes,  and  Rugby.'  Mr.  G. : 
'  Yes,  but  Rugby  never  got  quite  into  the 
first  rank.  It  was  always  dependent  on  its 
Headmaster.  Old  Hawtrey  used  to  say 
that  Eton  was  independent  of  its  Head. 
Probably  the  same  might  be  said  of  Win- 
chester. Eton  and  Winchester  would  go 
on  whoever  was  Head  ;  they  are  national 
institutions.'  Returning  to  the  Wordsworths 
he  quoted  the  Bishop  of  St.  Andrews'  Latin 

lines  on  his  wife — 

32 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

I  nimium  dilecta,  vocat  Deus,  i  bona  nostrae 
Pars  animae  ;  maerens  altera  disce  sequi. 

*  But,'  added  Mr.  Gladstone,  '  the  Bishop 
afterwards  married  again.  .  .  .  Bishop 
Wordsworth  broke  down  in  health  as  a 
young  man ;  he  is  now  eighty-four ;  it  is 
often  so.  Look  at  Liddell !  When  he  was 
a  young  man  he  was  condemned ;  Acland 
took  him  to  Madeira  for  several  years ;  he 
recovered  his  health,  and  has  grown  into 
the  grand  old  man  we  all  know.'  By-and- 
by  Mr.  Gladstone  gave  us  a  most  amusing 
account  of  how  he  had  gone,  as  a  young 
man,  to  a  music  hall.  *  It  was  when  I  was 
less  well  known ;  I  dursn't  do  it  now ;  it 
was  quite  respectable,  but  oh  !  so  dull.  By- 
and-by,  looking  round,  I  found  that  no  one 
was  drunk,  but  that  everybody  about  me 
was  quietly  boozing,  and  I  retired  as  being 
a  very  unprofitable  attendant.'  In  the  library 
to  which  we  adjourned,  he  spoke  mainly 
about  Greece,  ancient  and  modern.  He 
33  c 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

thought  that  after  the  Crimean  War  a  great 
Turk  might  have  restored  Turkey ;  now 
she  had  sunk  beyond  recovery.  He  thought 
that  Homer  had  intended  to  write,  or  rather 
sing,  two  more  poems,  on  the  wanderings 
of  Menelaus  and  on  the  last  days  and 
death  of  Odysseus.  He  did  not  believe  the 
existing  poems  were  largely  interpolated : 
'  nowhere  can  you  pick  out  five  lines  which 
have  not  the  characteristic  Homeric  style  ; 
Homeric  atmosphere  pervades  the  whole 
Homeric  poems.' ' 

D.  G.  H.  says :  "  I  recall  that  he  arrived 
rather  late  ...  his  conversation  through- 
out was  addressed  to  the  company  present. 
He  spoke  of  having  seen  Routh  in  Con- 
vocation ;  he  talked  most  of  the  events  of 
his  own  youth,  seeming  to  remember  them 
much  more  clearly  than  those  of  his  middle 
life.  .  .  .  When  we  passed  into  the  library 
a  semicircle  was  formed,  with  Mr.  Glad- 
stone at  one  horn  of  it  on  the  left  and 
34 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

myself  next  to  him.  He  was  very  deaf, 
and  I  had  to  repeat  to  him  many  things 
said  by  others  in  the  company.  He  talked 
to  me  about  the  nearer  East,  of  which  he 
had  heard  that  I  had  seen  something,  of 
his  own  mission  to  the  Ionian  Isles,  of 
the  present  Sultan.  He  spoke  hopefully 
of  Greece,  and  asked  if  brigandage  had 
ceased.  When  the  circle  broke  up,  I  re- 
call that  he  spoke  to  E.  of  the  quantity 
of  port  habitually  consumed  by  his  (E.'s) 
ancestor,  Lord  Eldon.  To  the  president  of 
the  O.U.B.C.  he  commented  on  the  respec- 
tive sizes  of  the  heads  of  men  in  the  Cam- 
bridge and  Oxford  boats.  .  .  .  When  he  left 
the  house  two  females  emerged  stealthily 
from  behind  a  chapel- buttress  and  followed 
him  to  the  Lodge,  and  up  the  High  Street. 
I  had  to  go  up  the  street  also,  and  I  saw 
them  following  him  past  Queen's  College, 
where  all  the  cabmen  on  the  stand  lined 
up  and  touched  or  took  off  their  hats  to 
35 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

him.  Mr.  G.  was  in  academical  dress  and 
carried  a  large  gamp  umbrella ;  he  walked 
very  fast,  with  long  strides,  responding  to 
all  salutes." 


* 

* 


Friday,  31. — All  his  portraits  make  him 
too  fierce.  There  is  great  mobility  and 
play  of  face,  as  well  as  of  gesture  with 
the  hands,  which  he  is  fond  of  bringing 
down  plump  on  the  table  to  emphasise  a 
point  (not  good  for  our  table,  which  is  a 
very  old,  thin  bit  of  the  finest  mahogany). 
Eyes  grey -blue,  and  though  occasionally 
they  light  up  so  much  as  to  be  describable 
as  "  fierce,"  in  ordinary  conversation  they 
are  essentially  mild.  On  the  only  occasion 
on  which  I  heard  him  in  the  House  ten 
years  ago  he  looked  big  (I  suppose  men 
do  look  big  there),  but  really  he  is  short 
of  stature  and  slight.1  Both  sight  and  hear- 

1  I  take  exception  to  the  epithet  "  slight." 
— W.  R.  A. 

C.  W.  O.  says :  "  My  first  impression  of  him 
36 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

ing  are  slightly  affected,  but  he  marches 
bravely ;  simply  lives  in  his  cap  and  gown, 
and  mislays  it  whenever  he  has  to  take  it 
off.1  Likes  to  accept  little  attentions  from 
Juniors,  and  accepts  them  very  prettily. 

was  that  he  was  a  much  bigger  man  than  I  had 
expected." 

1  It  was  sometimes  very  difficult  to  induce  Mr. 
Gladstone  to  divest  himself  of  his  gown,  and  I 
am  sure  that  he  regarded  the  less  frequent  use 
of  academical  dress  as  a  sign  of  decadence  in 
university  life.  On  one  night  of  his  visit  he  went 
with  me  to  dine  at  the  Club,  a  dining  society 
of  twelve  persons  then  just  completing  the  first 
century  of  its  existence.  The  member  who  enter- 
tained the  Club  on  that  evening  was  Dr.  Bellamy, 
who  was  then  Vice-Chancellor.  Mr.  G.  started 
with  me  in  full  academical  dress.  I  remarked  that 
we  did  not  wear  gowns  at  the  Club  dinner,  and 
he  replied  that  in  the  presence  of  the  Vice-Chan- 
cellor he  must  wear  his  gown.  I  did  not  pursue 
the  subject,  and  during  the  rest  of  our  short  drive 
we  discussed,  heaven  knows  why,  the  comparative 
efficiency  of  municipal  government  at  Manchester 
and  Liverpool.  When  we  entered  the  drawing- 
37 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

I  was  not  presented  to  him  to-night,  but 
he  spoke  to  me  accidentally  on  some  point 
of  College  history.  He  has  "  le  grand  air 
bourbonien,"  and  his  manners  are  very  per- 
fect. Quite  without  affectation,  he  has  the 
views  and  habits  of  an  earlier  age.  He 
spoke  very  prettily  to  H.  W.  B.,  who  was 
too  much  struck  with  the  suddenness  of 
the  address  to  converse  with  him,  when 
Gladstone  said,  "  We  were  at  Eton  together, 
were  we  not  ? "  (By  the  way,  B.  always 
used  to  say  of  his  Eton  days :  "  Yes,  Glad- 
stone was  a  horrid  boy,  horrid  boy,  asked 
me  to  belong  to  a  debating  society  once  ! ") 

room  at  St.  John's,  Dr.  Bellamy  said  at  once,  after 
the  first  greetings,  "  Mr.  Gladstone,  you  must  take 
off  your  gown."  "  But,"  said  Mr.  G.,  "  in  the 
presence  of  the  Vice-Chancellor — "  "Oh,  no," 
said  Dr.  Bellamy,  "  we  make  no  account  of 
Vice-Chancellors  in  the  Club.  You  must  take 
off  your  gown."  "  Well,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone, 
sadly,  "  in  this  lawless  assembly  I  suppose  I  must 
conform  to  its  rules." — W.  R.  A. 
38 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

Gladstone  has  a  strong  Lancashire  accent ; 
calls  "  prefer  "  "  prefurr  "  ;  "  conform  " 
almost  became  "  confurrm,"  but  not,  you 
understand,  the  Scottish  "  r."  Occasion- 
ally, as  old  people  will,  he  elides  an  h ; 
'erb,  'armony  came  as  a  surprise  to-night. 
I  caught  the  following  scraps  of  conversa- 
tion :  "Yes,  I  did  hear  Lord  John  [Russell] 
tell  the  story  of  his  being  presented  to 
Napoleon  at  Elba." 

"  There  have  been  no  great  musical  com- 
posers for  fifty  years.  Donizetti,  Rossini, 
and  Bellini  are  the  last.  '  La  Donna  e 
mobile '  is  the  last  air  that  has  been  written. 
Women's  voices  are  not  what  they  were. 
Now  there's  L.  T. :  she  has  a  nice  voice,  but 
absolutely  no  style." 

G.  **  I  view  with  the  greatest  alarm  the 
progress  of  Socialism  at  the  present  day." 

H.  H.  H.  "  Mr.  G.,  it  lies  with  you 
to  give  it  a  great  impulse  forward  or 
backward." 

39 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

G.  "  Whatever  influence  I  can  use,  Mr. 
H.,  will  be  used  in  the  direction  of  stopping 
it.  It  will  not  be  in  my  day,  but  it  is 
alarming.  It  is  the  upper  classes  who  are 
largely  responsible  for  it."  [Who's  he 
thinking  of?] 

He  ate  everything.  He  drank,  perfectly 
unconscious  of  what  he  was  drinking,  the 
first  wine  that  came  round  to  him.  I  thus 
noticed  him  drinking  severally  port,  claret, 
which  the  "  Screw  "  [the  Junior  Fellow  who 
decants  the  wine]  in  his  agitation  had  by 
mistake  poured  into  a  port-decanter,  and 
brown  sherry.  He  talked  incessantly  from 
seven-thirty  till  ten-twenty. 


* 
* 


"  Mr.  Gladstone,"  says  W.  R.  A.,  "  only 
fell  back  upon  brown  sherry  because  the 
Junior  Fellow  had  so  maltreated  the  port. 
I  had  not  noticed  this  mishap,  and  recollect 
calling  Mr.  Gladstone's  attention  to  the 

decanter    out    of    which    he    was    helping 
40 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

himself,  as  I  thought  he  might  have  misread 
the  labels.  He  replied  that  our  port  was 
excellent,  but  that  his  doctor  had  enjoined 
upon  him  the  drinking  of  a  drier  wine.  I 
did  not  discover  till  later  the  strange  com- 
bination of  flavours  which  had  been  presented 
to  him  in  the  guise  of  port." 

With  regard  to  Socialism  T.  R.  notes  that 
he  said  further :  "  For  me  Socialism  has  no 
attractions  :  nothing  but  disappointment 
awaits  the  working  classes  if  they  yield  to 
the  exaggerated  anticipations  which  are  held 
out  to  them  by  the  Labour  party." 

H.  H.  H.  adds :  "  He  also  expressed 
himself  very  positively  on  the  subject  of 
the  greater  class  selfishness  of  the  upper 
classes  compared  with  the  lower.  I  asked 
him  whether  Christianity  was,  in  his  opinion, 
as  great  a  force  in  English  politics  now  as  it 
was  fifty  years  ago.  He  said,  in  reply,  that 
he  thought  it  was  greater,  though  the 
manner  of  its  expression  had  changed,  'a 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

change  which  I,  as  a  denominationalist  and 
a  dogmatist,  cannot  wholly  approve.'  He 
said  that  an  indication  of  improvement  was 
the  better  conduct  of  members  at  prayers. 
This  was  not  the  only  occasion  on  which  he 
described  himself  as  *  a  denominationalist 
and  a  dogmatist.'  When  some  one  '  drew  ' 
him  on  the  question  of  Church  schools,  it 
was,  he  told  us,  in  this  dual  capacity  that 
he  '  regarded  the  Board  School  as  a  most 
unsatisfactory  solution  of  the  problem  of 
popular  education.' '  T.  R.  adds  again : 
"  Democracy  indeed  he  seemed  to  accept, 
but  he  thought  a  wide  franchise  was  not 
an  advantage  to  the  cause  of  reform.  He 
tried  to  show  that  the  real  reforms  of  1830— 
1880  would  all  have  been  carried  by  the 
unreformed  House  of  Commons.  This,  I 
believe,  was  a  favourite  theme  with  him." 
To  this  A.  H.  H. :  "I  remember  his  rather 
staggering  me  by  observing  that  the  Duke 

of  Wellington  was  quite  right  when  he  said 
42 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

in  1830  that  the  Constitution  was  incapable 
of  improvement,  and  by  his  defending  the 
saying  on  the  ground  that  the  control  which 
the  House  of  Lords  exercised  by  means  of 
the  pocket  boroughs  over  the  House  of 
Commons,  established  an  ideal  as  well  as 
a  real  equilibrium  between  the  component 
parts  of  Parliament.  He  went  on  to  say 
that  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832  destroyed 
this  equilibrium,  and  that  thenceforward  the 
Constitution  was  logically  bound  to  develop 
on  purely  democratic  lines,  a  result  which 
he  seemed  to  regard  as  a  doubtful  blessing." 
He  also  told  C.  G.  L.  outright  that  "  in 
point  of  ability  and  efficiency  he  thought 
the  country  had  never  been  better  governed 
than  in  the  period  preceding  the  first  Reform 
Bill." 

We  made  at  All  Souls  an  exception  in 
Mr.  Gladstone's  favour.     No  Fellow  in  my 
recollection  ever  spoke  to  another,  however 
43 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

much  his  senior,  as  "  Mr.,"  but  instinctively 
every  one  called  the  honorary  Fellow,  "  Mr. 
Gladstone." 

On  this  point  C.  G.  L.  remarks :  "  It  fell 
to  me  on  the  first  morning  to  have  to 
address  some  formal  question  to  him,  and 
I  addressed  him  of  course  as  '  Mr.  Glad- 
stone.' He  smiled  and  said,  'Surely  it 
ought  to  be  "  Gladstone "  here '  (we  were 
in  the  Common  Room).  But  of  course 
we  could  not  take  him  at  his  word ;  do  you 
think  any  one  ever  addressed  the  Great 
Commoner  as  '  Pitt  *  ?  " 


*     * 
* 


Saturday,  February  i. — "There  is  a  beard 
upon  the  chin  of  man  which,  pointed  at 
the  tip,  leads  on  to  fortune."  At  breakfast 
this  morning  I  found  H.  H.  H.,  A.  C.  H., 
J.  S.  G.  P.,  A.  H.  H.,  C.  W.  O.,  C.  H.  R., 
and  Mr.  Gladstone.  The  Old  Man  rose  and 
bowed  as  I  came  in  and  of  course  I  bowed 
back.  I  took  the  vacant  seat  right  opposite 
44 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

him,  and  we  had  much  delightful  conversa- 
tion which  I  will  endeavour  to  put  down. 
But  what  was  my  amazement,  when  I  got 
up  to  get  my  bacon  and  coffee  from  the 
fire,  when  he  said,  "  I  want  a  word  with 
you  afterwards,  if  it  is  not  trespassing  too 
much  on  your  valuable  time." 

"  My  time  has  no  value,  Mr.  Gladstone 
[I  had  three  pupils  waiting  for  me  at  10, 
II  and  12  respectively — poor  beasts],  but 
if  it  were  much  more  valuable  than  it  is  it 
would  be  wholly  at  your  service."  [Blue 
funk  on  part  of  F.  for  the  rest  of  breakfast.] 

H.  H.  H.  said:  "Half  the  people  in 
crowded  towns  are  unbaptized." 

G.  '*  Not  so  in  Catholic  countries.  A 
curate  of  ours  went  from  Hawarden  to 
a  populous  place  in  Nottinghamshire  and 
found  he  had  to  baptize  1600  people  in  a 
year ;  as  for  those  of  confirmation  age  and 
above  it,  he  thought  it  best  not  to  ask 
them  whether  they  had  been  baptized.  No, 
45 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

it  wasn't  Nottingham  itself.  I  can't  recall 
the  name  of  the  town,  my  memory  is  not 
what  it  was  [then  it  must  have  been  pro- 
digious— it's  big  enough  now,  though  very 
erratic  and  capricious]  ;  but  it  was  a  great 
scandal  to  the  great  landowner l  of  the  place. 
Who  was  he  ?  I  can't  tell  you  ;  no,  not  the 
Newcastle  family,  but  I  can't  recall  who." 

Some  one  asked  him  if  there  were  fees 
for  baptism.  He  didn't  seem  to  know. 
Indignant  chorus  from  H.  H.  H.  and 
A.  C.  H. :  "  No !  " 

1  This  reference  to  the  "great  landowner" 
illustrates  a  point  in  Mr.  Gladstone's  view  of 
English  life  which  Mr.  Morley  has  admirably 
brought  out  in  his  "  Life."  The  world  was  often 
to  him  the  pre-Reform  Bill  world,  in  which  the 
"great  landowner"  would  naturally  look  after 
both  the  souls  and  bodies  of  his  tenants.  Any- 
thing more  out  of  touch  with  the  world  of  1890 
than  the  notion  that  an  owner  of  property  in  a 
large  town  would  be  supposed  to  know  if  its 
inhabitants  were  baptized  or  not  can  hardly  be 
imagined. 

46 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

G.  "  But  I  think  in  Catholic  countries  all 
the  sacraments  are  charged  for." 

F.  told  J.  D.'s  story  of  the  couple  who 
lived  for  two  months  by  getting  their  baby 
baptized    in    a   fresh    parish   each   day    and 
getting  a  dinner  out  of  the  Vicar  for  their 
piety.     G.  laughed  heartily  at  it. 

A.  C.  H.  "  Do  you  like  the  addition  to 
our  reredos,  Mr.  G.  ?  " 

G.  "  I  hardly  noticed  it,  but  I  will  look." 
A.    C.    H.     "We    shall    look   for    your 

opinion  on  it.  There  is  great  division  of 
opinion  on  it  in  College."  [C.  W.  O. 
groaned.] 

C.  H.  R.  "  You  know  the  heads  of  the 
statues  in  the  reredos  were  copied  from  the 
heads  of  Fellows  of  the  College  living  when 
it  was  put  up  ?  " 

G.  "Yes  ...  it  must  have  cost  Bathurst 
a  great  deal  of  money." 

A.   C.   H.    "More   than   he   intended,  I 

believe." 

47 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,   1890 

G.  "  The  sculptor,  too,  I've  heard,  was  a 
man  to  make  a  good  thing  out  of  it.  What 
was  his  name  again  ?  " 

A.  C.  H.  "  Geflowski." 

G.  "  Ah,  yes,  he  was  a  shrewd  man.  But 
[to  C.  W.  O.J  you  have  been  at  Florence 
lately,  and  you've  seen  the  new  facciata  of 
the  Duomo  ?  My  friend  Mr.  Leader  is  San 
Callisto  there."  [Meaning  that  the  statue 
of  San  Callisto  is  copied  from  Mr.  L.'s 
head.] 

C.  W.  O.  "  Oh,  yes,  the  man  who  has  just 
written  the  life  of  Sir  John  Hawkwood." 

G.  "  It  was,  I  believe,  a  joint  composition. 
Marino  (?)  got  a  lot  of  documents  together 
for  it." 

Some  one  started  the  question  whether 
Warden  and  Fellows  could  still  be  buried  in 
College  Chapels.  A.  C.  H.  of  course  knew 
the  law  :  "  The  Warden  always  ;  Fellows  if 
they  die  in  College."  Then  some  one  asked 

me  if  it  was  true  that  leave  had  been  refused 
48 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

to  bury  the  late  President  of  Magdalen  in 
the  Chapel.  (I  did  not  know.) 

G.  "  Leave  ?     From  whom  ? " 

A.  C.  H.  "  From  the  Home  Secretary.  I 
forget  who  he  was  at  the  time." 

G.  "  Ah  yes,  of  course  I  remember  Palmer- 
ston  refusing  leave  for  a  Canon  of  West- 
minster to  be  buried  in  the  Abbey,  which 
seems  hard  considering  what  a  lot  of  people 
they  bury  there  who  have  no  connection 
with  it." 

F.  "They  still   bury  in  the    cloisters  at 
Salisbury ;     do    they    bury    in    cloisters    at 
Eton  ?     Would   a   Provost   have    the    right 
to    be    buried    there    if    he    had    died    in 
College?" 

G.  "  I  don't  know.     Where  was  the  late 
Provost  buried  ? " 

F.  "Either   in    Somersetshire,    or  in  the 
Churchyard  of  Eton  College  Chapel." l 

G.  "  The  Chapel  was    the  parish  church 

1  See  below,  p.  81. 

49  D 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

of  Eton,  of  course."  [He  remembers  much 
more  about  Eton  than  about  Oxford.] 

The  conversation  drifted  back  to  fees  for 
sacraments,  and  A.  C.  H.  said  :  "  Fees  on 
marriage  are  irrecoverable  by  law.  I  am 
bound  to  marry  two  people  properly  banned 
and  licensed,  but  have  no  means  of  get- 
ting the  fee  unless  they  please  to  give 
it  me." 

G.  "  It's  the  same  with  doctors."  [Wrong, 
Mr.  G. ;  new  Act,  perhaps  you  passed  it.] 
"  Now  my  doctor,  Sir  Andrew  Clark,  he's  a 
very  clever  man  and  a  very  hard-working 
man.  Eight  hours  a  day  ?  Sir,  he  works 
more  like  sixteen.  He  often  gets  no  fees, 
though  he  has  made  a  fortune  larger  than 
any  doctor  ever  made.  People  send  for  him 
long  distances  into  the  country,  and  then 
give  him  nothing  or  the  ordinary  fee.  He 
takes  what  he  can  get.  He  is  utterly  un- 
mercenary.  But  you  would  be  surprised  to 

hear  that  no  less  a  person  than  Dr.  Hawtrey 
50 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

told  me  that  I  would  never  believe  it,  if  he 
were  to  give  me  the  names  of  people  who 
never  paid  their  sons'  bills." 

F.  "  It  was  the  same  at  Westminster.     I 
had  a  most  interesting  document  in  my  hands 
the  other  day — a  manuscript  diary  and  ac- 
count book   of  Dr.   Busby,  and  it  contains 
endless  entries,  against  the  highest  names,  of 
bills  unpaid." 

G.  "Ah,    that's    very    interesting.     Now 
why  doesn't  some    one  write  a  life   of  Dr. 
Busby  ?  that  would   be  a  volume   of  great 
interest.      Busby   was    the    founder   of   the 
Public  School   system  of  England,  and  the 
Public  School  system  is  the  greatest  thing  in 
England,  not  even  excepting  the  House  of 
Commons.     Those  two  :  the  Public  Schools 
and  the  House  of  Commons  !  "  (slapping  his 
hand  thrice   on   the  table).     "  Busby  was  a 
wonderful  man  :  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  he 
was  made  Headmaster  under  Charles  I.  and 
continued  to  be  so  until  William  III." 

Si 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

H.  H.  H.  (laughing).  "  He  must  have 
been  a  pretty  fair  time-server  then." 

G.  "  No,  and  this  is  the  point  at  which  I 
am  aiming — no  one  ever  called  him  a  time- 
server  :  he  made  the  times  serve  him.  Well 
now,  his  life  must  be  written." 

F.  "  Dr.  Rutherford  could  do  it  very 
well ;  he  is  much  interested :  he  wanted  the 
Oxford  Historical  Society  to  publish  this 
Diary,  but,  as  it  contained  no  reference  to 
Oxford,  we  were  obliged  to  decline." 

A.  C.  H.  then  led  the  conversation  to 
Christ's  Hospital  and  the  precarious  position 
of  its  endowments,  and  asked  whether  the 
scheme  was  completed.  Some  one  told  a 
story  of  how  he  had  been  there  lately,  and 
had  had  a  conversation  with  the  old  porter, 
who  declared  he  wasn't  going  to  move  what- 
ever the  buildings  did.  G.  laughed  heartily, 
and  asked  what  they  were  going  to  get  for 
the  site. 

A.  C.  H.  " £650, ooo  I  was  told." 
52 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

G.  "  What  does  it  cover  ? " 

A.  C.  H.  "  Five  and  a  half  acres,  I 
believe." 

G.  "  It  is  to  the  south  of  Holborn,  is 
it  not?" 

A.  C  H.  "No,  to  the  north." 

Then  G.  got  boggled  in  his  geography 
about  the  position  of  St.  Bartholomew's, 
Newgate,  &c.  C.  W.  O.  whispered  :  "  He 
likes  maps,  draw  it  for  him."  F.  drew 
and  handed  it  over  to  him.  Then  he 
asked  where  St.  Martin's  -  le  -  Grand  was. 
He  has  quite  forgotten  his  city,  if  indeed 
he  ever  knew  it.  Anyhow,  he  found  H.'s 
figures  far  too  low,  and  the  conversation 
turned  on  the  value  of  city  sites. 

G.  "I  remember  a  firm — a  very  good 
firm,  who  had  two  small  rooms  in  Token- 
house  Yard,  and  their  rent  was  ^300. 
They  began  to  expect  it  to  be  raised,  per- 
haps to  ^400  or  even  ^500.  So  when 
the  landlord  next  called  they  were  very 
S3 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

polite,  as  he  was  to  them,  and  he  said 
they  were  such  excellent  tenants  he  would 
let  them  stop  on  at  ^1000.  They  were 
staggered,  but  accepted  and  made  a  very 
good  thing  out  of  it  afterwards." 

He  then  quoted  several  instances  of 
enormous  rents  which  I  can't  recollect. 
H.  H.  H.  asked  him :  "  Do  you  expect 
London  to  go  on  growing  ? " 

G.  "Yes,  continually.  In  another  cen- 
tury London  will  have  ten  millions  of 
people." 

H.  H.  H.  "But  will  not  the  decay  of 
the  docks  and  all  the  industries  depending 
on  them  affect  London  very  much  ? " 

G.  "  We  can't  tell  yet.  London  is  not 
like  the  great  towns  of  the  North,  where 
there  are  a  few  great  industries  liable  to 
sudden  upset.  Why  do  we  never  hear 
of  great  distress  at  Birmingham  ?  Simply 
because  its  industries  are  so  subdivided. 
Small  industries  are  preferable  to  great 
54 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

ones  for  the  prosperity  of  a  town.  Now 
everything  is  made  at  Birmingham;  all  the 
sham  oriental  curiosities  you  buy  as  you 
jump  ashore  through  the  surf  at  Madras 
[Why  Madras  ?  he's  never  been  in  India, 
has  he?]  are  made  there.  But  the  whole 
system  of  Lancashire  industries  will  be 
upset  by  the  Manchester  Ship  Canal. 
That  will  cause  a  stupendous  industrial 
revolution." 

C.  W.  O.  "  Will  Liverpool  suffer  ?  " 
G.  evaded  the  question,  but  spoke  of 
the  difficulties  of  the  bar  at  Liverpool,  and 
said  that  the  Manchester  Canal  was  likely 
to  lead  to  the  opening  of  another  mouth 
of  the  Mersey. 

O.  "  Above  or  below  Liverpool  ? " 
G.  "  They    mean    to    cut    through    the 
narrow  neck  of  the  Cheshire  peninsula." 

H.   H.    H.  "  But   don't   you    remember 
that    at    the   time    of  the    war    scare    the 
Liverpool  bar  was  supposed   to  be  a  great 
55 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

protection — could  easily  be  rendered  im- 
passable ? " 

I  forget  how  the  conversation  got  back 
to  London,  but  something  led  Mr.  Glad- 
stone to  say,  with  great  emphasis  :  "  Now 
that  those  infamous  coal  dues  are  taken 
off.  .  .  ."  He  didn't  exactly  know  whether 
they  were  off  or  only  to  come  off,  but 
C.  H.  R.  supplied  the  information  and 
recounted  how,  when  he  was  City  Remem- 
brancer, a  petition  was  got  up  against  these 
dues,  and  how  the  City  got  up  sham  and 
bogus  meetings,  "  as  they  know  how  to 
do,"  in  defence  of  the  dues. 

G.  (interrupting  and  with  humour)  : 
"  Nowhere  is  the  art "  [of  getting  up  sham 
meetings,  he  meant]  "  better  understood." 
[Much  laughter,  which  delighted  him.] 
"  But,  do  you  know,  I  think  Randolph 
Churchill's  speech  had  a  great  effect  in 
getting  those  dues  abolished.  Most  re- 
markable man  is  Randolph  Churchill.  He 
56 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

went  to  that  office  [Exchequer]  knowing 
nothing  of  figures,  but  having  a  natural 
capacity  for  the  grasp  of  them,  and  I  can 
tell  you  he  impressed  the  Treasury  and 
Revenue  men  very  greatly.  .  .  ." 

One  by  one  during  breakfast  people  had 
dropped  in  and  out,  and  of  course  many 
people  took  a  part  in  the  conversation,  and 
much  was  said  which  I  cannot  now  recall ; 
but  the  protagonists  were  always  H.  H.  H., 
C.  W.  O.,  and  A.  C.  H.  A.  H.  H.,  who 
is  of  course  by  far  our  best  talker  and 
likely  to  know  more  de  par  le  monde  poli- 
tique  than  any  of  us,  hardly  said  a  word. 
Sometimes  there  was  a  little  court  of 
people  half  round  and  half  behind  Mr.  G., 
who  pushed  his  chair  a  little  way  back ; 
and  he  had  the  prettiest  way  of  half  turn- 
ing round  to  people  and  changing  the 
address  of  his  conversation.  There  was 
only  one  old  Westminster  boy  present, 
F.  W.  B.,  and  I  think  that,  as  usual,  he 
57 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

had  got  up  late,  for  he  came  in  after  the 
episode  about  Busby  ;  but  some  one  men- 
tioned him  as  a  Westminster  to  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, who  forthwith  asked  him  a  string 
of  questions  about  the  school,  and  said  "  in 
the  seventeenth  century  it  was  much  the 
greatest  school  in  England,"  and  he  reeled 
off  the  names  of  some  of  its  greatest  sons : 
"  Eton,"  he  said,  "  only  took  the  lead 
from  the  time  of  the  Walpole  family." 

The  butler  poured  out  Mr.  Gladstone's 
tea  for  him,  and  to  everything  that  was 
handed  him  he  always  said,  "  Oh,  thank 
you,  thank  you."  A  radiant  smile  mantled 
on  the  butler's  solemn  face,  and  he  looked 
a  "  nunc  dimittis."  You  know  that  till 
'86  he  was  a  great  admirer  and  an  ardent 
politician.  He  even  christened  his  son 
"  Ewart "  after  the  name  of  his  hero. 

Mr.  G.  half  looked  round  at  the  butler 
who  was  handing  him  butter,  when  he 

said,  "  the  pats  of  butter  are  of  the  same 
58 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

size  as  they  were  in  my  undergraduate 
days,  and  so  are  the  pieces  of  fish !  "  Yet 
he  could  be  sharp,  too.  He  quite  politely 
but  firmly  shut  up  one  of  us,  who,  with 
singular  want  of  tact,  tried  to  draw  him 
about  the  reasons  of  the  unpopularity  of 
the  London  County  Council.  "  Indeed  ; 
he  had  not  heard  of  that — was  not  much 
in  the  way  of  hearing  current  gossip." 


*     * 
* 


A  similar  instance  has  been  recalled  to  my 
memory  by  C.  G.  L.  "One  evening  some 
of  the  Junior  Fellows,  perhaps  wickedly, 
tried  to  test  the  astuteness  of  the  *  old 
parliamentary  hand.'  It  was  well  known 
that  Mr.  Gladstone  had  not  been  altogether 
successful  on  his  mission  to  the  Ionian 
Islands  in  1859;  so  X.  started  some  subject 
connected  with  the  Mediterranean,  and 
gradually  drew  the  talk  nearer  to  the  Ionian 
Islands.  But  long  before  we  reached  them 
something  seemed  to  put  the  old  gentleman 
59 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

on  his  guard ;  there  was  a  momentary  and 
very  characteristic  lifting  of  that  well- 
known  right  eyebrow,  and  then,  with  per- 
fect courtesy,  he  rose  saying,  '  And  now  I 
think  it  would  be  very  pleasant  to  see  the 
moonlight  in  the  quadrangle.' ' 

"  I  could  add  another,"  writes  W.  R.  A. 
"  One  evening  in  Common  Room  his  neigh- 
bour was  getting  on  to  some  political  subject 
— I  think  it  must  have  been  Liberalism  in 
Wales — and  he  turned  it  off  by  a  story  about 
Bethell  which  I  have  never  heard  elsewhere. 
Bethell  was  conducting  a  case  before  Lord 
Justice  Knight  Bruce,  whom  he  did  not  love 
and  who  did  not  love  him.  Knight  Bruce 
was  of  Welsh  extraction,  and  disliked  any 
allusion  to  it ;  he  was  also  a  scholar,  and  fond 
of  quoting  classical  authors.  Knight  Bruce 
interrupted  the  argument  with  a  classical 
quotation.  Bethell's  opponent  was  at  that 
moment  in  conversation  with  his  junior, 

and  becoming  aware  that  the  Lord  Justice 
60 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

had    said    something,   looked   up   and   said, 

*  I   did   not    catch    his   Lordship's   remark/ 

*  Neither   did    I,'   said    Bethell,   '  it  was  an 
observation  couched,  I  believe,  in  the  Welsh 
language.'  ' 

LETTER  OF  FEB.    i   (continued) 

N.B. — Mr.  G.'s  Lancashire  accent  grows 
on  one  :  he  almost  says  "  gyarden "  for 
garden,  and  does  say  "  propourrtion."  At 
last  about  9.55  (this  had  lasted  some  fifty- 
five  minutes)  there  were  only  two  people 
left  beside  him  and  me ;  and  I,  thinking 
he  might  have  forgotten,  got  up  and  bowed, 
intending  to  slip  away  ;  but  he  was  up 
like  a  shot,  and  said,  "  Yes,  yes,  come 
along,  I  won't  keep  you  long ; "  but  he 
didn't  get  up,  so  I  stood  by  the  fire 
through  a  short  fit  of  silence.  At  last 
he  moved,  and  I  followed  him ;  he  had 
forgotten  his  cap  and  gown,  which  I 

fetched,   and  he  said  :    "  This   is   my  own 
61 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

gown  but  a  borrowed  cap,  and,  as  you  see, 
it  doesn't  fit — my  head  is  a  difficult  one 
to  fit "  (laughing).  He  led  the  way  to 
his  rooms.1  F.  said  :  "  You  begin  to  know 
your  way  about  College,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone." 

G.  "  Yes,  but  when  I  was  last  here  my 
base  of  operations  was  the  Warden's  house, 
and  that  was  in  a  different  part  of  the 
College." 

1  The  situation  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  rooms  is  a 
matter  of  historical  importance.  They  were  on 
the  second  floor  of  the  staircase  immediately  be- 
yond the  buttery,  with  windows  looking  over  the 
large  quadrangle  on  the  one  side,  and  over  the 
Coffee  Room  Garden,  towards  Queen's,  on  the 
other.— W.  R.  A. 

C.  W.  O.,  whose  rooms  were  immediately  be- 
neath Mr.  Gladstone's,  says  that  he  has  "  a  most 
vivid  memory  of  the  noise  of  feet  up  and  down 
the  staircase  all  day  long,  as  deputation  after  de- 
putation, and  individual  after  individual  climbed 
to  the  second  floor  to  pay  its  respects  to  our 
visitor." 

62 


VIEW  OF  ROOMS  AT  ALL  SOULS  COLLEGE.  OXFORD, 
OCCUPIED  BY  MR.  GLADSTONE 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

F.  "I  hope  you  are  comfortable — they're 
very  nice  rooms  you've  got." 

G.  "  Charming,  everything  I  could  wish.'* 
(He  then  led  me  to  the  table,  which  was 
piled  up  with  letters,  and,  taking  one  up, 
gave    it    to    me.)       "  This    is    from    young 
Peel  (the  President  of  the  Union  Debating 
Society),  and  you  see  how  it  concerns  you." 
I    saw    that    it    didn't    concern    me    in    the 
least,    and    was   beginning    to    wonder  if   I 
should   call   for  help.      I   supposed  at  first 
he  had  mistaken  me  for  some  secretary  to 
the  Union  (the  letter  was  one  inviting  him 
to    make    a    speech    at   the    Union),    when 
he  suddenly  began  :  "  Now  concerning  our 
conversation  of  last  night,  I  thought  better 
to  ask  your  advice  in  the  matter.  .  .  ." 

F.  "  I    see,    Mr.    Gladstone,    you    have 
made    a    complete    mistake.      I    hadn't    the 
honour    of    being    presented     to    you    last 
night." 

G.  "  I  beg  a  thousand  pardons.     I  took 

63 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

you  for  Mr.  Pelham"  [who  had  sat   next 
him  in  the  Common  Room  last  night].1 

F.  "The  mistake  has  been  a  most  happy 
one  for  me.     Pelham  has  often  teased   me 
about  my  growing  a  beard  in  order  to  try 
and  look  like  him  ;    and  it's  a  great  com- 
pliment too,  for  he's  one  of  the  handsomest 
men  in  Oxford." 

G.  "  My  dear  fellow,  it  was  the  beard  ! 
My  eyesight  is  not  what  it  was — you  must 
forgive  an  old  man — nor  my  hearing  either." 

F.  "  But   you'll   let    me   take    a    message 
to   Pelham  for  you  now.     I'll  go  directly, 
and  I'm  sure  he'll  come." 

G.  "  No,  no,  don't  trouble,  do  sit  down. 
Now  I  remember  a   man  in  the  House  of 
Commons    when   I   was   young   whom    we 
knew  as  '  the  man  with  the  beard.'     Nobody 

1  Henry  Pelham  was  then  Camden  Professor  of 
Ancient  History  and  a  leading  University  Liberal. 
He  was  the  guest  of  the  Warden  at  dinner,  and 
Mr.  Gladstone  and  he  got  on  extremely  well 
together.  Multis  ille  bonis  flebilh  .  .  .  1907. 
64 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

wore  beards  then,  and  that  was  the  origin 
of  my  mistake."  [And  he  laughed — a  deep 
gurgling  sort  of  chuckle.]  "  But  what  I 
wanted  was  this.  Mr.  Pelham  and  I  were 
talking  last  night  about  Egyptology  and 
Assyriology  and  their  connection  with 
Homer."  [My  stars !  thinks  I,  I've  heard 
he  does  this  kind  of  thing  by  the  hour, 
and  my  Greek  is  devilish  rusty.]  "  Now 
that,  you  know,  is  a  subject  in  which  I 
am  much  interested,  and  I  have  lately  de- 
voted much  time  to  investigating  the  effect 
of  the  Assyrian  and  Egyptian  myths  on 
Homer's  phraseology.  And  I  thought  per- 
haps, if,  instead  of  speaking  at  the  Union, 
I  were  to  give  the  young  men  there  a 
sort  of  informal  lecture "  —  [he's  eighty- 
one,  ye  gods] — "  a  friendly  talk,  in  fact, 
on  the  subject,  it  might  be  of  interest  to 
them.  But  Pelham  said  he  thought  (not 
apropos  of  this  proposal,  for  I  hadn't  laid 

it  before  him)  that  the  subject  was  hardly 
65  E 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

yet  in  sufficiently  exact  condition  to  lay 
before  them "  [quite  right,  Pelham]  "  as  a 
regular  part  of  their  curriculum,  and  I 
wanted  to  consult  him  as  to  whether  there 
would  be  any  harm  in  my  acting  as  I  now 
propose  to  act." x 

1  This  lecture  at  the  Union  was  a  strange  per- 
formance. He  told  me  a  day  or  two  before  that 
he  had  been  in  some  difficulty  about  a  subject.  I 
suggested  that  any  personal  recollections,  either  of 
Oxford  in  his  undergraduate  days  or  of  the  House 
of  Commons  when  he  first  entered  it,  would  be 
of  immense  interest.  He  said  no,  there  were 
reasons  against  either  of  these,  but  that  he  had 
hit  on  a  subject  which  he  thought  was  sure  to  be 
acceptable.  It  was  the  "connection  of  Homeric 
with  modern  Assyriological  studies."  I  wondered, 
and  was  silent ;  so  did  the  audience  wonder,  while 
it  was  being  delivered — wonder  what  it  was  all 
about.  But  when,  at  the  close  of  the  address,  a 
vote  of  thanks  to  him  was  proposed,  then  we  got 
the  real  thing  to  which  we  had  been  looking 
forward,  ten  minutes  of  genuine  oratory,  in  which 
he  told  us  how  pleased  he  was  to  come  back  to 
the  Union,  to  find  that  the  President  was  the 
grandson  of  his  old  leader,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  and 
66 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

F.  "  I  should  think  it  would  not  in  the 
least   affect    his    standpoint,    which   was,   I 
understand,  confined  to  the  question  of  the 
regular  teaching  at  Oxford.     All  he  meant 
was  it  was  too  early  for  it  to  come  in  as  a 
subject  in  *  the  Schools.' ' 

G.  "  Yes,  I'm  sure  he'll  agree  it  would  do 
no  harm.    But,  do  you  know,  I've  discovered 
the  strangest  things  about  it.     Now,  there's 
that    epithet   irv\apmtsy    the    *  gate  -  shutter,' 
applied  to  Aidoneus  "  [he  pronounces  Greek 
in  a  foreign  way  that  I  never  heard  before, 
and,  as  I  said,  my  Greek  is  rusty].    "  Liddell 
and  Scott  give  no  meaning  for  it  *  (and  I'm 

to  live  again,  even  for  a  short  time,  in  Oxford, 
in  a  place  of  which  "  he  loved  every  stone  in  the 
walls."— W.  R.  A. 

1  Liddell  and  Scott  do  give  the  meaning,  and 
the  one  Mr.  Gladstone  mentioned.  Moreover,  it 
is  not  to  'Al&cwevs  but  to  'AtSt)?,  of  which  'Ai&aveixi 
is  only  a  lengthened  form,  that  the  epithet  applies 
in  the  three  passages  where  it  occurs  in  Homer. 
(Iliad,  viii.  367,  xiii.  415  ;  Odyssey,  xi.  277.) 
67 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

going  to  talk  to  Liddell  about  that),  but 
why  should  he  be  called  the  gate-shutter? 
Persephone  was  the  ruler  of  the  infernal 
regions,  and  Aidoneus  had  nothing  to  say 
to  it.  ...  But  I  find  in  the  series  of  myths 
given  in  [somebody  or  other's]  collection  of 
Assyrian  antiquities,  that  there  were  seven 
gates  of  those  regions,  and  that  when  Ash- 
taroth,  being  a  goddess,  went  thither  on  her 
own  concerns  she  had  to  pass  these  gates, 
and,  though  she  had  some  difficulty  in  get- 
ting in,  she  had  none  in  getting  back — 
whereas  with  mortals  the  difficulty  was  to 
get  back.  It's  curious,  very  curious."  \_N.B. 
— I  failed  to  see  how  it  bore  on  'Al'Swvev? 
TrvXaprt]?,  but  that  was  probably  my  igno- 
rance.] "  And  again  there's  that  number 
seven.  There  was  a  system  of  'E^ra-ism 
in  the  ancient  world — the  seven  gates  of 
Thebes,  for  instance.  And  in  the  Assyrian 
version  of  the  Deluge  there  are  seven  days 

of  storm  and  one  day  of  calm  ;  which  again 
68 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

is  affiliated  to  the  seven  days  of  creation."  [I 
have  always  heard  that  "  mystic  numbers " 
are  one  of  the  last  infirmities  of  noble 
minds.]  "  Yes,  Homer's  epithets  are  very 
curious.  They  haven't  been  half  enough 
studied,  and  they  all  have  a  meaning,  and 
many  of  them  a  mythologic  meaning.  Now 
again  of  the  numbers.  Why  should  He- 
phaestus make  twenty  seats  for  the  Olympian 
Gods  ? l  There  were  not  twenty  gods,  or 
rather  far  more.  But  Thetis  finds  him 
making  twenty.  Now  Rawlinson  says  that 
this  number  twenty  was  the  mystic  number 
of  the  Assyrians.  .  .  ." 

All  this  was  poured  out  without  my 
having  a  chance  of  getting  a  word  except 
Yes  and  No,  and  other  respectful  expres- 
sions of  astonishment.  How  long  he  would 
have  gone  on  I  can't  say,  but  it  had  already 
lasted  half-an-hour  when  the  porter  entered 
with  a  card  from  Sir  Henry  Acland,  who 

1  Iliad,  xviii.  373. 
69 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

was  below.  So  I  rose  and  said  I  would  go 
at  once  to  Pelham,  and  that  I  was  quite  sure 
that  Pelham  would  approve  of  anything  he, 
Mr.  Gladstone,  thought  fit  to  do  about  his 
lecture.  He  again  begged  forgiveness  for 
the  mistake,  and  I  assured  him  that  it  had 
afforded  me  the  greatest  delight ;  he  said  we 
should  meet  again  at  dinner.  And  I  went 
off  to  tell  Pelham,  who  immediately  said  he 
should  go  and  get  shaved. 

Sunday  morning,  February  2. — I'm  afraid 
Vol.  III.  won't  be  as  interesting  as  Vols.  I. 
and  II.,  for  the  editor  is  tired.  Last  night 
at  dinner  I  sat  about  three  places  off  him, 
and  the  conversation  was  chiefly  carried  on 
with  W.  R.  A.,  C.  W.  B.,  and  C  C., 
C.  H.  R.  hovering  about  the  fringe 
of  it. 

G.  "Tennyson  was  the  greatest  poet  of 
the    century.      Swinburne,    yes,   great,    but 
rather  same."     W.  R.  A.  depreciated  Swin- 
burne.    G.  to  a  certain  extent  stood  up  for 
70 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

him.  G.  also  spoke  of  the  extraordinary 
sale  of  Lewis  Morris's  works :  all  depreciated 
him. 

W.  R.  A.  "  Have  you  read  Bryce's  book 
on  America  ?  " 

G.  "Not  all  of  it.  I  can't  say  all,  but 
enough  to  see  what  a  valuable  and  laborious 
book  it  is.  The  Americans  are  astonished 
at  it.  The  development  of  millionaires  in 
America  is  extraordinary.  Now  there's  Car- 
negie— Carnegie  began  at  four  shillings  a 
week  and  is  making  £360,000  a  year.  He 
wrote  a  book  about  it,  which  I  did  my  best 
to  have  disseminated  in  England,  but  with- 
out success  ;  but  I  got  him  to  write  an  article 

in  the  Magazine,  which  I  regard  as 

most  remarkable.  He  there  argues  for  the 
duty  of  making  great  fortunes,  and  enume- 
rates three  ways  of  spending  them.  Two 
are  bad — one  is  good.  The  bad  ones — mind 
I  don't  go  with  him  here — not  in  the  first 
one — not  for  a  moment — are  (i)  bequeath- 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

ing  it  to  your  wife  and  children;  (2) 
bequeathing  it  to  anything  else — in  fact, 
to  charitable  institutions.  THERE  I  AGREE 
WITH  HIM,  EVERY  WORD  "  (slapping  his  hand 
hard  on  the  table).  "The  good  one  is  (3) 
giving  it  away  in  your  lifetime.  He's  always 
giving  away,  in  England  as  well  as  in  America, 
giving  j£ 50,000  to  a  public  library  in  America 
every  now  and  then.  Extraordinary  thing 
the  number  of  public  libraries  in  America ; 
they  say  there  are  over  two  thousand  of 
them  ;  there  are  no  circulating  libraries  there. 
When  the  Royal  College  of  Music  wanted 
money,  and  was  begging  twenty  pounds  here 
and  fifty  pounds  there  with  great  difficulty, 
and  the  Princess  of  Wales  was  trying  every- 
where for  money  for  it,  my  daughter  wrote 
to  Carnegie  and  he  sent  her  a  cheque  for 
;£iooo,  and  the  Princess  was  wild  with  de- 
light. Now  Quaritch  deals  enormously 
with  America — it's  the  Americans  who  give 

the  long  prices  for  early  editions,  so  he  tells 
72 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

me.  Does  your  library  deal  much  with 
Quaritch  ?  No  ?  With  whom  then  ? " 
W.  R.  A.  "  With  various  booksellers." 
G.  "  The  rage  for  early  editions  is 
wonderful.  Now,  I  had  a  little  book,  a 
first  edition  of  Alastor,  and  some  one  sug- 
gested to  me  that  it  was  valuable,  and  I  took 
it  to  Sotheran  or  Westell,  I  forget  which, 
who  sent  it  to  auction,  and,  after  deducting 
the  liberal  commissions  charged,  I  got  a 
cheque  for  ^8  or  £9.  Ah  !  but  I  burned 
my  fingers  the  other  day :  I  bought  a  little 
book,  Sterling's  Poems,  for  two  guineas,  and 
met  a  friend  afterwards  who  had  got  an 
equally  good  copy  for  I2s." 


* 
* 


The  storage  of  books  was  a  favourite 
theme  with  Mr.  Gladstone.  C.  G.  L.  re- 
members how  he  launched  out  on  this 
theme  one  evening  in  the  Common  Room, 
and  illustrated  his  scheme  of  bookshelves  by 
an  elaborate  use  of  knives,  forks,  glasses,  and 
73 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

decanters.  In  the  Library,  says  C.  W.  O., 
the  thing  that  interested  him  most  was  the 
collection  of  sixteenth-century  Bibles. 

LETTER  OF  FEB.  i  (continued) 

The  conversation  slipped  on  to  Lord 
Houghton,  and  he  told  a  story  of  Hough- 
ton's  extraordinary  love  of  paradox,  which 
he  wished  kept  private,  and  another  which 
he  didn't  wish  kept  private :  "  It  was  one 
day  at  breakfast  at  Milman's  (Macaulay 
was  there),  and  Houghton  said  that  he 
thought  any  author  was  entitled  to  perfectly 
indefeasible  copyright  for  ever  and  ever 
in  any  book ;  and  in  the  next  breath  he 
declared  that  any  person  ought  to  be  at 
perfect  liberty  to  quote,  extract,  hash  up, 
detach,  pillage  any  piece  out  of  any  book 
he  liked.  And  he  maintained  the  two 
with  perfect  seriousness  as  both  true." 

We  came  back  to  Carnegie  somehow  or 
other. 

74 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

G.  "I  dined  with  him  not  long  ago  at 
the  Hotel  Metropole,  but  no  pomposity, 
all  very  simple  and  nice.  Yes,  but  a  mere 
leveller,  a  mere  leveller  in  politics ;  quite 
seriously,  I  dislike  his  politics.  He  has 
been  taken  up  by  some  one  whom  I  won't 
mention  in  the  political  world,  who  has 
made  some  use  of  him  and  floated  a  news- 
paper. No,  I  never  see  that  sort  of 
newspaper." 

The  conversation  turned  on  a  then  lead- 
ing Radical  politician  and  journalist,  and 
W.  R.  A.  boldly  said  that  he  mistrusted 
the  man.  C.  H.  R.  spoke  of  the  man's 
trying  to  make  himself  out  worse  than  he 
is,  and  ascribing  to  himself,  in  the  smoking- 
room  of  his  club,  all  the  vices  under  heaven. 

G.  was  guarded,  and  spoke  of  him  as 
"an  able  man,  a  man  of  whom  he  knew 
little,"  &c. 

Much  that  I  didn't  catch ;  then 

W.  R.  A.  "Yes,  I  put  Boswell  at  the 
75 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

very  head.  The  four  best  biographies  ever 
written  are  Boswell  [something  inaudible], 
Morley's  '  Life  of  Cobden,'  and  Southey's 
' Life  of  Wesley.'  "  l 

G.  "  Ah !  you're  right,  but  not  about 
Morley's  'Cobden.'  I  don't  like  it.  I 
have  the  highest  opinion  of  Morley.  But 
I  knew  Cobden  intimately,  and  he  was  a 
most  remarkable  man.  The  way  that  man 
worshipped  Peel  !  The  way  he  stuck  by 
Peel  and  surrendered  his  own  judgment 
to  him.  But  the  fact  is  that  he  had  the 
most  generous  mind  and  one  of  the  most 
sensitive.  I  remember  Palmerston  wound- 

1  I  do  not  think  that  I  was  so  dogmatic.  I  said 
that,  if  I  had  to  name  the  four  best  biographers, 
I  should  name  Boswell,  a  long  way  ahead,  then 
Southey's  "  Life  of  Wesley,"  Trevelyan's  "  Mac- 
aulay,"  and  Morley's  "Cobden."  If  I  recollect 
rightly,  Mr.  Gladstone  accepted  the  first  two 
readily,  thought  there  was  much  to  be  said  about 
the  third,  but  that  I  was  wrong  about  the  fourth. 
— W.  R.  A. 

76 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

ing  him  very  much,  quite  unintentionally; 
Palmerston  said  lots  of  things  which  he  did 
not  mean,  and  never  meant  to  wound  any- 
body. But  Cobden  had  said  something  in 
his  speech  which  reflected  on  the  conduct 
of  foreign  affairs,  and  Palmerston  in  reply 
applied  to  him  the  line  *  ne  sutor  ultra 
crepidam.'  Cobden  was  terribly  hurt.  Not 
an  orator  like  Bright,  but  such  a  noble 
character,  so  simple  and  so  strong." 

At  coffee  time  I  took  an  opportunity  of 
asking  Mr.  Gladstone  whether  he  had  seen 
Pelham ;  he  said,  "  Yes,  he  came  yesterday 
morning  soon  after  you  left : "  and  then 
laughed  immensely  over  his  mistake  again. 
Then  he  bade  me  sit  down  by  him,  and  still, 
I  suppose,  under  some  vague  idea  that,  if 
not  Pelham,  I  was  his  shadow,  or  at  least 
an  ancient  historian,1  he  began  to  speak  of 

1  T.  R.  illustrates   this   when   he  says:   "Mr. 
Gladstone  always  seemed  to  be  more  interested  in 
subjects  than  in  persons  ;  he  did  not  readily  find 
77 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

the  conditions  of  the  study  of  ancient  history. 
Then  my  long  walks  with  Pelham  in  Nor- 
folk five  years  ago  stood  me  in  good  stead. 
At  first,  like  the  Russians  at  ZorndorfF,  I 
"  stood  still  to  be  sabred  like  oxen,  yea  like 
sacks  of  meal  "  (see  Carlyle's  "  Frederick  ")  ; 
gradually  I  began  to  find  my  tongue. 

out  what  kind  of  man  he  was  talking  to,  and  was 
often  oddly  forgetful  of  what  a  man  in  his  position 
is  usually  careful  to  remember." 

C.  W.  O.  adds  another  illustration  of  this  : 
"  Mr.  Gladstone  remarked  that  we  should  consider 
it  strange  to  be  told  that  Cardinal  Newman  was 
unacquainted  with  the  works  of  Dante  ;  '  the 
proof  of  it  which  I  can  give  is  this,'  said  he  ; 
'the  last  time  that  I  saw  my  old  friend  at  the 
Oratory,  I  took  the  opportunity  of  telling  him 
that  I  considered  his  "  Dream  of  Gerontius  "  the 
most  striking  glimpse  of  the  other  world  that 
had  been  conceived  since  the  "  Paradiso  "  :  I  was 
proceeding  to  enlarge  upon  this  theme  when  he 
abruptly  changed  the  topic  of  conversation,  from 
which  I  could  only  conclude  that  he  knew  nothing 
of  Dante.'  That  Newman  had  a  modest  desire 
not  to  talk  about  his  own  works  had  evidently  not 
struck  his  interlocutor  as  likely." 
78 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

G.  "And  Rawlinson's  lectures  were  not 
much  attended  ?  " 

F.  "  No,  I  believe  not ;  indeed  I  think  he 
did  not  lecture  much  latterly." 

G.  "  Why  did  he  resign  ? " 

F.  "  I  think  because  he  was  made  a  Canon 
of  Canterbury." 

G.  "  No,   no,   he  has  been    a    Canon    of 
Canterbury  for   years"    [poking    his    finger 
at  F.]. 

F.  "  Of    course,    I    beg    pardon,    it   was 
because  he   got  a   City  living  and    had    to 
resign    one    of  the    three    preferments,   and 
chose  the  professorship." 

G.  "  Yes,  yes,  that  was  it.     But  he  is  an 
authority,  is  he  not  ?     I  mean  his  books  ? " 

F.  "  Yes,    I   believe   great,    especially  on 
Phoenicia,  though  I   saw  a   very  unfavour- 
able review  of  one  of  his  last  works  in  the 
Spectator  not  long  ago." 

G.  "  He    and    his    brother    Sir     Henry 
Rawlinson  led  the  way  to  the  discoveries  of 

79 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

the  most  ancient  histories  of  the  East.  I 
fancy  he  utilised  his  brother's  knowledge 
largely." 

F.  "  Mr.  Sayce  is  the  great  authority  on 
these  things  now.     I  don't  know  how  far 
he  has  upset  Rawlinson." 

G.  "But  I  am  thinking   of  thirty  years 
ago.      Sayce    is    quite    young.      Pelham    is 
great  on  Greek  History,  isn't  he  ? " 

F.  "  Greater  on  Roman.     You  know  he 
is  a  favourite  disciple  of  Mommsen.     When 
Mommsen  was  last  over  here  he  stayed  with 
Pelham,  who  is  following  his  plan  of  teach- 
ing.     He  wants  to  make  a  new  Britannia 
Romana  on  Camden's  model.     I  believe  he 
has  got  a  great  work  on  the  stocks." 

G.  "  But  how  is  that  not  to  clash  with 
Merivale  ?      I    thought    Merivale   was    the 
standard    work."      [F.    don't    know    much 
Roman  History,  but  he  knows  better  than 
that — Merivale  is  exploded.    F.  didn't  know 

what  to  say,  wriggled  and  twisted,  with  the 
80 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

eagle's  blue-grey  eyes  glaring  at  him  about 
eight  inches  off  his  own — looked  up  to 
W.  R.  A.  for  help,  but  W.  R.  A.,  who 
was  standing  just  above  us,  either  heard  not 
or  wouldn't  hear.] 

F.  lt  I  am  afraid   I'm   not   competent   to 
say,  Mr.   Gladstone.     I   fancy   Pelham  will 
be  able  to  fill  up  some  lacunae  in  Merivale, 
especially  in  the  later  period." 

Somehow  we  got  back  to  some  of  our 
breakfast  subjects  and  back  to  Eton,  as  he 
so  often  does.  F.  said :  "  We  might  refer 
the  question  of  where  a  Provost  is  buried 
to  W.  R.  A.,  he  is  on  the  Governing  Body." 
W.  R.  A.  said :  "  Provost  Hawtrey  was 
buried  in  the  Chapel.  I  was  at  his  funeral 
when  I  was  a  boy.  The  late  Provost  was 
buried  in  the  cemetery  on  the  Eton  Wick 
Road.  I  attended  his  funeral,  as  a  member 
of  the  Eton  Governing  Body,  in  1884." 

G.  "  Headmasters     are    appointed    very 

young  nowadays." 

81  F 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

W.  R.  A.  "  Yes,  when  I  was  on  the 
Governing  Body  of  Dulwich  several  can- 
didates were  rejected  because  they  were  over 
forty."  G.  seemed  quite  astonished  at  this, 
and  said,  "  But  surely  none  was  ever  ap- 
pointed under  thirty." 

Chorus.  "  Montagu  Butler,  Welldon, 
Rutherford." 

G.  "  Ah  !  "  [It  would  require  black  letter 
to  give  an  idea  of  the  depth  and  richness  of 
his  "Ah!"] 

Chorus  mixed  up  with  itself  again,  and 
left  G.,  W.  R.  A.,  and  F. ;  and  F.  said  to 
W.  R.  A. :  "I  remember  when  Warre  was 
appointed  to  Eton  some  people  were  afraid 
he  would  be  cut  out  by  a  younger  man." 
W.,  knowing  whom  I  meant,  smiled. 

G.  "Warre  has  been  very  successful,  has 
he  not?  I  hear  the  school  is  1050  in 
number." 

W.  R.  A.  "No,  Mr.   Gladstone,   it   has 

never  quite  touched  a  thousand.     In  1877 
82 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

it  was  within  a  few  of  that  number — then 
came  agricultural  depression  and  the  number 
fell  off:  now  again  it  is  at  its  highest." 

G.  approved  warmly  of  F.'s  great  enthu- 
siasm for  Warre.  W.  R.  A.  led  the  con- 
versation to  some  question  of  finance,  which 
led  G.  to  say :  "  The  man  who  knew  least 
about  finance,  who  was  ever  at  the  head  of 
the  Treasury,  was  the  first  Lord  Ripon." 

W.  R.  A.  "  Prosperity  Robinson,  you 
mean  ? " 

G.  "  Yes,  he  was  so-called  because  he  in- 
herited a  wonderful  year  of  prosperity  and  a 
full  exchequer." 

F.  "  Was  that   the  result  of  Vansittart's 
lowering  of  duties  ?  " 

G.  "  Vansittart  wasn't  at  all  an  able  man." 

F.  "  I  only  know  about  him  from   Miss 
Martineau's  '  History   of  the  Peace/      She 
gives   him  an  excellent  character,  and  so,  I 
think,  does  Greville." 

G.  "  Two  very  different  witnesses  to  char- 

83 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

acter.     IVe   always    heard   he   was   a  good 
man,  but  an  able  man  ?     No." 


*     * 
* 


W.  R.  A.  adds  :  "  A  financier  of  that  period 
of  whom  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke  with  great 
respect  was  Mr.  Herries,  whose  appointment 
as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  was  an 
episode  in  the  brief  Ministry  of  Lord  Gode- 
rich.  I  think  that  the  name  of  Mr.  Herries 
arose  on  another  occasion  than  that  referred 
to  in  the  text,  when  Mr.  G.  was  talking  of 
the  Crimean  War  and  of  the  scanty  recog- 
nition given  to  the  services  of  Sidney  Her- 
bert as  Secretary  at  War.  He  then  said  that 
in  time  of  war  the  work  of  organising  sup- 
plies of  all  sorts  was  an  ungrateful  task,  in 
which  every  shortcoming  was  denounced, 
while  difficulties  of  administration  were 
unheeded,  and  what  was  done  well  was 
unnoticed,  and  that  the  military  men  were 
always  exacting  beyond  reason,  and  then  he 

instanced  Herries.     Without  the  work  done 
84 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

by  Herries,  he  said,  the  Peninsular  campaign 
could  not  have  been  carried  to  a  successful 
issue,  and  he  referred  me  to  a  Memoir  of  the 
life  of  Herries  in  which  he  told  me  that  I 
should  find  a  full  justification  of  his  praise. 
Herries  was  Commissary-in-Chief  from  Oc- 
tober 1811-1816,  and  the  Memoir,  though 
in  part  of  a  controversial  character,  designed 
to  rebut  some  disparaging  remarks  of  Sir 
Spencer  Walpole  on  Herries'  qualifications  as 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  establishes  to 
the  full  Mr.  Gladstone's  estimate.  But 
when  did  he,  in  the  midst  of  politics,  theo- 
logical controversies,  and  Homeric  studies, 
find  time  to  read  a  little  known  biography 
of  an  almost  forgotten  statesman  ?  " 

LETTER  OF  FEB.  2  (continued) 

W.  R.  A.  then  spoke  of  Sir  James 
Graham's  great  work  in  administrative  re- 
form, to  which  G.  assented,  but  without 
enthusiasm. 

85 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

Chorus  gradually  gather  round  G.  in  a 
half-moon,  and  G.  begins  to  lay  down  the 
law  on  finance. 

G.  "  There  isn't  a  country  in  Europe  that 
has  a  sound  system  of  finance  except  Eng- 
land. Now  I'll  tell  you  what  it  is.  The 
instant  the  financial  year  is  ended  we  in 
England  have  a  complete,  though  rough, 
account  presented  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons." ["Complete  though  rough"  were 
not  his  words.  I  think  the  word  was  "  ap- 
proximate," but  he  used  "  complete  though 
rough"  a  minute  afterwards  to  describe  the 
same  thing.]  "  It  could  be  presented  on  half 
a  sheet  of  note-paper" — [he  seized  on  that 
engine  of  finance,  which  happened  to  be 
lying  on  the  table  by  his  side,  and  flourished 
it  about].  "  Now  the  French  Chamber  has  a 
most  elaborate  and  detailed  system,  but  no 
one  knows  how  far  the  Ministers  will  keep 
to  it  in  the  coming  year."  [I  gathered  from 

this  tirade  that  the  French  Ministry  pretend 
86 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

to  present  their  accounts  to  the  nation,  and 
really  present  only  the  shell  or  exterior  of 
them,  and  are  then  at  liberty  to  walk  round 
parliamentary  restrictions  at  will.  This  I 
am  sure  was  his  sense,  though  I  couldn't 
understand  the  details.]  "  And  all  other 
European  nations  have  followed  the  French 
instead  of  us.  Their  accounts  are  all  a 
SHAM.  We  should  be  amazed,  for  instance, 
if  we  could  learn  the  truth  of  the  financial 
state  of  Italy.  The  aggregate  interest  of  her 
debt  is  greater  than  our  own.  Yet  she  has 
only  been  twenty  or  thirty  years  making  it.'* 

Some  one  said  :  "  I  think  she  had  a  clean 
start  before  Florence  became  the  capital  ?  " 

G.  "  Yes,  I  believe  she  started  with  a  clean 
bill  of  health  then.  There  may  have  been 
some  slight  debt  over  from  Piedmont,  but 
there  was  none  from  the  other  provinces." 

C.  W.  B.  "  And  the  local  debts  in  Italy  are 
so  gigantic.  In  Naples  they  are  raising  loans 
at  15  per  cent.,  and  much  the  same  in  Rome," 
87 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

G.  "  Really  ?  It  is  amazing.  But  why 
don't  the  Italian  funds  fall  ?  they  are  still 
standing  at  95.  What  do  the  people  in 
Naples  and  Rome  do  for  a  livelihood  ? " 
[Ah,  Mr.  G.,  they  were  better  off  as  honest 
brigands  before  you  upset  poor  King  Bomba.] 

C.  W.  B.  "  Taxation  has  reached  its  limit 
in  Italy,  has  it  not  ?  " 

G.  "I  should  say  it  had  certainly." 

C.  W.  B.  "And  then  there's  the  octroi." 
[G.  shook  his  head  sadly.] 

G.  "  But  when  I  was  last  in  Tuscany  I 
saw  no  signs  of  distress  ;  jolly  prosperous 
farmers,  coming  in  with  their  goods  to 
Florence;  they  have  very  easy  landlords, 
and  seem  to  have  a  fair  market." 

F.  "  Val  d'Arno's  a  very  rich  country — 
you  mustn't  judge  the  rest  of  Italy  by 
that." 

B.  thought  the  Po  was  in  the  Val  d'Arno, 
and  G.  corrected  him  with  great  alacrity. 

Something  then  led  Mr,  G,  to  tell  a  story 
88 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

of  a  Greek  who  found  his  way  to  Hawarden, 
knowing  no  word  of  English  but  T\aScrr£>v. 

G.  '*  And  I  was  at  home  at  the  time,  and 
some  of  my  people — the  coachman,  I  think 
— went  out  and  found  him  asleep  in  a  barn 
— and  at  first  they  were  for  suspecting  him  ; 
but  one  of  my  sons  went  to  him  and  they 
fetched  me.  I  couldn't  understand  him, 
and  my  nephew  Jack  was  there.  Where's 
George  ?  Here,  George,  you're  wanted — 
your  brother  was  there,  and  he  made  him 
write  down  his  Greek  words  of  which  we 
could't  understand  his  pronunciation,  and  so 
we  made  out  that  he  had  come  to  see  me." 

W.  R.  A.  "And  why?" 

G.  (rising  and  shaking  himself  like  an  old 
lion) :  "  Because  he  thought  that  in  some 
way  or  other  I  was  a  friend  of  the  Greeks. 
We  didn't  know  what  to  do  with  the  man ; 
he  hadn't  a  penny  in  his  pocket.  Heaven 
knows  how  he  got  there.  But  I  got  him  a 

place  in  the  Greek  Consulate  at  Liverpool, 
89 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

where  he  is  doing  very  well,  and  he  writes 
me  grateful  letters." 

W.  "  One  is  glad  to  know  when  an 
incident  of  that  sort  terminates  so  happily." 

I  think  this  was  the  last  point.  It  was 
10.20  ;  he  rose  and  said  good-night  all  round. 

[Then,  of  course,  the  rest  of  the  juniors 
danced  round  F.,  harrying,  badgering  him, 
and  pinching  him  to  tell  the  story  of  the 
private  interview  of  the  morning  ;  of  which, 
of  course,  A.  H.  H.  has  several  splendid 
versions  already  going,  the  best  perhaps  being 
this  :— 

"And  then  you  know  F.  got  in  a  blue 
funk  when  they  were  left  alone  and  the  door 
was  shut,  and  Gladstone  began  in  a  solemn 
voice :  *  The  remarks  which  in  your  levity 
you  made  last  night  about  Egypt  .  .  .'  and 
F.  thought  he  must  have  been  frightfully 
drunk  over  night  and  accused  the  old  man 
on  his  foreign  policy/'] 

At    8.45    this    morning   in    chapel    Mr. 
90 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

Gladstone  was  resplendent  in  his  Doctor's 
hood ;  the  Bible-clerk  walked  to  T.  R.,  our 
Dean,  and  asked  who  should  read  the  Second 
Lesson,  and  then,  on  being  told,  went  and 
led  out  the  Great  Man,  who  began  at  once : 
"  Here  begin  neth  the  Twenty-First  Chapter 
of  St.  Matthew's  Gospel— No  ;  of  the  Reve- 
lation," and  then  read  that  great  chapter 
very  simply,  with  his  broad  rolling  Lanca- 
shire accent.  F.  H.  T.,  who  is  a  born  singer 
and  orator,  had  already  performed  Genesis  i. 
with  extreme  beauty. 


*     * 

* 


T.  R.  afterwards  told  me  that  when  he 
asked  him  before  chapel  whether  he  acknow- 
ledged the  authority  of  the  Dean  (i.e.  to  send 
him  out  to  read),  the  old  man  answered : 
"  Mr.  R.,  I  acknowledge  all  constituted  au- 
thority. I  am  the  most  conformable  of  men.** 

"  It  is  difficult,*'  says  T.  R.,  "  to  describe 
Mr.  Gladstone's  rendering  of  the  lesson ; 
there  was  no  striving  for  effect,  but  his 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

reverent  sense  of  the  message  he  was  passing 
on  to  us,  and  his  perfect  articulation,  seemed 
to  invest  the  familiar  words  with  a  new 
meaning.  One  day,  when  he  read  the 
Second  Lesson  at  the  Cathedral,  Canon 
Bright  (a  strong  political  opponent)  was  re- 
ported to  have  said :  *  I  can  forgive  him 
much  for  the  light  which  he  has  thrown  on 
the  mind  of  St.  Paul.'  " 

C.  G.  L.  adds :  "  Equally  remarkable  was 
his  reading  of  the  Psalms.  His  deep  sonorous 
voice  continued  reading  each  verse  long  after 
the  rest  of  us  had  finished  it.  I  can  see  him 
now  bending  over  the  book  as  if  absorbed  in 
the  effort  to  realise  each  word  :  he  seemed 
quite  oblivious  of  every  one  else  in  chapel ; 
and  it  was  this  same  detachment  that  made 
his  rendering  of  the  Lesson  so  striking." 

LETTER  OF  FEB.  2  (continued) 

At  breakfast  I  was  about  the  middle   of 

the  table  and  Mr.  G.  at  the  end,  so  I  didn't 
92 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

catch  much.  Sunday  breakfast  is  always  a 
fuller  table  than  week-day.  The  conversa- 
tion was  principally  between  A.  H.  H., 
A.  C.  H.,  and  himself. 

G.  "  A  Norwegian  or  a  Dane  is  more  like 
an  Englishman  than  a  German  is,  a  South 
German  more  like  a  North  German  because 
of  the  Slavonic  element  so  largely  mixed 
with  the  population  of  Prussia,  Mecklen- 
burg, and  Pomerania"  [?  Wendish — and  is  a 
Wend  a  Slav  or  even  an  Aryan  ?]. 

G.  "  I  have  lived  out  of,  and  again  into, 
the  period  when  it  is  the  fashion  to  give 
Sunday  breakfasts.  Now  there's  my  friends 
Lord  and  Lady  S. ;  they  are  famous  for 
keeping  the  best  table  in  London ;  when  I 
first  stayed  with  them  they  (being  very  strict 
people  about  Sunday)  would  have  no  cooking 
done  on  that  day,  but  next  time  I  stayed  I 
was  surprised  to  find  a  hot  breakfast  and  a 
large  party — they  had  been  obliged,  they 
said,  to  give  in." 

93 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

Followed  a  story  about  Christopher  Words- 
worth which  has  escaped  my  memory. 

G.  "Yes,  I  knew  the  Princess  Lieven. 
She  flattered  and  petted  and  toadied  [the 
second  Earl]  Grey  till  she  could  twist 
him  round  her  little  finger.  It  was  quite 
a  different  thing,  as  she  found,  when  she 
tried  to  play  the  same  game  with  Lord 
Aberdeen." 

I  did  not  catch  the  whole  of  his  remarks 
about  Grey,  but  the  general  tone  of  them 
was,  to  my  surprise,  disparaging. 

G.  "When  I  was  an  undergraduate  we 
ate  no  lunch  except  Leman's  biscuits,  which 
were  all  the  thing  then." 

A.  C.  H.  "  But  you  dined  at  five — what 
long  evenings  you  must  have  had."  [To 
my  great  regret  I  failed  to  hear  more  of 
this  topic,  but  he  went  on  for  some  time 
at  it.] 

After  to-night  I  shall  have  few  chances  of 
94 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

meeting  him  except  breakfast ;  he  dines  out 
every  night  for  the  next  few  days  till  he 
goes,  which  will  be  on  Friday. 

Monday  ^  February  3,  '90. — A  poor  budget. 
I  thought  I  had  had  enough  favour  and  kept 
discreetly  in  the  background.  At  dinner 
last  night  there  was  a  larger  party,  and  I 
saw  and  heard  nothing  except  when  he 
chaffed  me  about  my  beard  and  said  good- 
night to  "  Professor  Pelham." 

Breakfast  this  morning ;  he  told  an  ex- 
cellent story  apropos  of  the  Duke  of  Cumber- 
land's and  the  Duke  of  Cambridge's  habits 
of  swearing. 

G.  "  Lord  Mark  Kerr  had  sworn  at  some 
troops  at  a  review  before  the  Queen.  The 
Queen  sent  for  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  and 
said  he  must  reprimand  Lord  Mark,  which 
the  Duke  did  as  follows  :  *  Look  here,  Mark, 
H.M.  heard  you  swear,  and  she  said  she  was 

damned  if  she'd  stand  it.' ' 
95 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

G.  "  The  English  people  are  extra- 
ordinarily difficult  to  work  up  to  excitement 
on  any  question ;  one  may  hammer  away  at 
them,  and  very  likely  they  will  remain 
quite  indifferent ;  and  even  if  they  wake 
up,  unless  you  keep  them  hot  long  enough 
to  carry  it  through  they  will  go  to  sleep, 
and  it  may  be  fifty  years  before  you  can 
wake  them  up  again."  [What  a  commentary 
on  recent  politics !  ] 

G.  [Eton  again.]  "  Now  when  I  was  at 
Eton  there  were  four  classes  of  boys.  There 
was  the  idle  and  clever  boy,  and  perhaps 
he  had  the  best  enjoyment  of  all  out  of 
the  school;  then  there  was  the  idle  and 
stupid  boy,  and  he  was  well  off  too,  for  his 
idleness  compensated  for  his  stupidity.  The 
clever  and  industrious  boy  was  not  so  well 
off ;  he  did  every  one's  verses  for  them,  and 
was  generally  made  a  beast  of  burden.  But 
the  worst  off  of  all  was  the  stupid  and  in- 
dustrious boy.  He  had  nothing  to  compensate 
96 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

for  his  stupidity}-  I  remember  a  specimen  of 
the  last  class  who  had  somehow  or  other 
achieved,  with  huge  labour,  a  copy  of 
Iambics.  His  tutor  took  them  up  between 
his  finger  and  thumb,  when  they  were  pre- 
sented, and  said,  with  a  contemptuous  air, 
{ Todd,  what  demon  has  prompted  you  to 
rush  into  Greek  verse  r ' 

G.  "  I  was  present  in  Convocation  at 
Oxford  when  the  question  of  Catholic 
Emancipation  was  before  the  country." 

A.  C.  H.  "I  suppose  there  was  a  brave 
debate." 

G.  **  Debate,  sir,  not  at  all.  Congre- 
gation [sic]  agreed  by  —  votes  to  five 
(slapping  his  hand  on  the  table)  to  peti- 

1  This  story  was  evidently  a  favourite  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's.  I  see  from  the  Life  that  he  had 
already  told  it  in  two  speeches  to  schools,  one  at 
Mill  Hill  and  the  other  at  Marlborough.  The 
next  story  is  also  mentioned  in  the  Life. 
97  G 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

tion    Parliament   against    Catholic    Emanci- 
pation." l 

G.  [Of  Scottish  patriotism,  Carnegie 
again.]  "I  remember  one  passage  in 'his 
book.  His  first  ideas  of  the  majesty  of 
office  were  derived  from  the  Provost  and 
Corporation  of  Dunfermline  in  their  robes 
and  chains  (he  was  born  at  Dunfermline). 
*  What  Mecca,'  he  says, '  is  to  the  Moslem, 
what  Jerusalem  is  to  the  Jew,  what  Rome 
is  to  the  Catholic,  that,  and  more  than  that, 
Dunfermline  is  and  will  always  be  to  me.' 
He  has  a  true  Scottish  patriotism." 


*     * 
* 


T.  R.  once  got  Mr.  Gladstone  to  talk 
of  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland  :  "  I  spoke 
of  Chalmers  as  a  '  High  Churchman ' ;  he 
demurred  to  the  phrase :  '  No  doubt  there 
was  a  certain  agreement  between  high  Pres- 

1  In  the  Life,  where  he  again  tells  this  story, 
the  gist  is  the  same,  but  he  mentions  forty-seven 
votes  as  given  against  the  majority. 
98 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

byterians  and  high  Anglicans,  but  not  funda- 
mental agreement,'  and  then  he  passed  from 
the  topic.  I  think  his  view  was  that  a 
Church  might  have  deep  spiritual  life  though 
deprived  of  '  spiritual  independence ' ;  but 
that  there  cannot  be  a  deep  religious  life 
in  a  Church  which  has  not  an  adequate  sense 
of  the  importance  of  the  Sacraments." 

On  the  whole  I  am  surprised  to  remember 
that  there  was  little  theological  talk.  He 
exhibited  (on  the  first  afternoon,  I  think) 
much  interest  in  the  fact  that  Bismarck  had 
recently  received  a  theological  degree,  and 
said  that  he  was  surprised  that  Jowett  held 
no  degree  in  theology.  C.  G.  L.  was  able 
to  inform  him  that  Jowett  was  a  Doctor 
in  Theology  of  the  University  of  Leyden. 

There  is  an  unaccountable  lacuna  in  the 

letters  between  February  3  and  8.     Letters 

were  certainly  written  each  day,  though  none 

so  long  as  those  of  February  I  and  2,  and 

99 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

I  think  that  on  each  day,  except  one  when 
Mr.  Gladstone  breakfasted  out,  I  met  him 
at  breakfast.  It  is  possible  that  the  letters 
were  lent  to  friends  or  otherwise  mislaid. 

Saturday \  February  8. — Well,  it's  all  over, 
and  the  great  man  is  gone.  The  Domestic 
Bursar  said  last  night  it  would  be  quite  a 
relief  when  he  had  quitted  the  College 
without  any  mishap,  for  he  (the  bursar)  felt 
such  a  responsibility  on  his  shoulders.  Last 
night  there  was  a  great  party  at  W.  R.  A.'s 
house,  and  my  wife  and  I  were  invited  to 
the  drawing-room.  When  the  gentlemen 
came  in  from  the  dining-room,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone came  in  alone  and  looked  round,  and 
presently  came  and  talked  to  me.  I  presented 
my  wife,  and  we  had  a  good  deal  of  pleasant 
talk.  He  was  exceedingly  polite  and  kind 
to  her,  but  it  was  quite  evident  that  his 
old  Oxonian  Toryism  resented  the  idea  of 
"  married  Fellows,"  and  we  heard  from  other 

sources  that  the  whole  cf  the  woman  element 
100 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

in  modern  Oxford  was  profoundly  distasteful 

to  him. 

*     * 

T.  R.  further  elucidates  this  point :  "  He 
spoke  kindly  of  efforts  to  improve  the 
education  of  women :  one  of  his  own 
daughters  was  a  tutor  at  Newnham,  Cam- 
bridge ;  but  colleges  for  women  at  Oxford ! 
— a  deep  'Ah'  indicated  that  Mr.  Glad- 
stone had  misgivings.  When  Mrs.  Gladstone 
was  in  Oxford,  a  lady  spoke  of  her  visit  as 
a  '  pleasant  surprise ' ;  '  Not  at  all,  not  at 
all,  ma'am,'  said  the  old  man  in  a  tragic 
voice,  'there  are  far  too  many  ladies  in 
Oxford  already.' " 

LETTER  OF  FEB.  8  (continued) 

He  told  a  lovely  story  about  a  Highland 
boatman  which  I  reserve  till  we  meet,  and 
then  got  on  to  the  late  Bishop  of  Durham, 
whom  he  had  met  at  Braemar  and  in  Norway, 
and  was  much  interested  when  I  said  that 

I   had  been  in  his  house  at  Bournemouth 
101 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

during  his  last  illness.  He  remembered 
J.  R.  H.1  on  the  Braemar  visit,  and  asked 
what  he  was  doing.  He  spoke  much  of  the 
hurry  of  life  in  modern  Oxford,  and  I  said 
that  I  believed  if  the  terms  were  longer  we 
should  not  be  so  hustled.  He  agreed,  and 
commended  the  Scottish  system  of  six 
months'  term,  and  when  I  said  everything 
Scottish  was  to  be  commended,  he  smiled 
cordial  approval,  and  spoke  of  the  nobility 
of  the  Scottish  student  life  and  the  peck 
of  meal  in  the  garret.  Harcourt  came  up, 
and  the  wife  and  I  retired.  He  at  once 
began  to  Harcourt  on  Homer,  which,  as  the 
latter  is  a  man  of  science  pure  and  simple, 
was  a  little  hard  on  him.  When  he  said 
good-night  to  me,  which  he  did  very 
warmly,  he  said  how  happy  he  had  been 
in  College  and  how  he  would  gladly  end 
his  days  here.  But,  truth  to  tell,  he  was 
tired  to-night,  and,  though  I  suppose  he 
1  The  present  Bishop  of  Rochester. 

IO2 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  OXFORD,  1890 

lives  an  even  more  exciting  life  all  the 
year  round,  the  mere  amount  of  talking 
that  he  does  is  bound  to  take  it  out  of  a 
man  of  his  age. 


*     * 
* 


This  is  the  end  of  the  letters. 

The  generation  that  knew  Mr.  Gladstone 
personally  is  passing  away,  and,  as  Lord 
Rosebery  recently  pointed  out,  the  combina- 
tion of  "  bookishness  "  and  statesmanship — 
to  use  the  word  "  statesmanship "  in  its 
popular  sense,  as  equivalent  to  "  the  art  of 
governing  " — is  becoming  rarer  every  year. 
But  we  who  were  young  when  Mr.  Gladstone 
was  old  will,  I  think,  never  regret  the  week 
which  we  spent  in  the  company  of  one 
whom  the  most  pressing  and  arduous  duties 
of  political  life  had  never  been  able  to 
divorce  from  his  catholic  affection  for  all 
manner  of  books,  and  in  whom  no  changes 
of  political  standpoint  had  weakened  his 

affection  for  the  University  of  Oxford. 
103 


Printed  by  BALLANTYNE,  HANSON  <fr»  Co. 
Edinburgh  &>  London 


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